Like every special interest, the video game industry has its own lobbying group. The Entertainment Software Association, which runs the Electronic Entertainment Expo trade show, represents the industry to congress. Today, the association is revealing that its gamer-focused grassroots organization — though one that doesn’t always have the best interests of gamers in mind — reached a major milestone.

The ESA’s Video Game Voters Network surpassed 500,000 members. This lobbying group works to inform gamers and mobilize them to act on public policy that may negatively impact the gaming industry.

“As the prevalence and influence of computer and video games in our society has grown, so too has the dedicated membership of VGVN,” VGVN senior vice president Rich Taylor said. “These highly engaged members make their voices heard in government offices across the country, educating officials about video games’ positive impacts and advocating for policy issues affecting game creators and consumers.”

In the past, the ESA and the VGVN have fought against laws that would restrict the First Amendment rights of games. Particularly during the U.S. Supreme Court case Brown v. EMA/ESA, which attempted to implement government regulation on the sale of violent video games to minors in the State of California. The Court upheld gaming’s First Amendment right to free expression thanks in part to the ESA’s legal efforts.

But the ESA is primarily a lobbying group for the game industry and not for gamers. While the two groups’ interests often align, they diverged in early 2012 when the ESA came out in support of the strict Internet regulations Stop Online Piracy Act and Protect IP Act. These two bills planned to give intellectual-property holders the right to shut down any site that hosted copyrighted material.

SOPA/PIPA prompted sites like Wikipedia to shut down for a day in protest. The League for Gamers popped up in opposition to the ESA’s VGVN.

Eventually, due to pressures from gamers and industry members, the ESA changed its stance on SOPA/PIPA.

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Today marks a calendar year since passionate Internet activist and major tech companies helped defeat bad tech legislation SOPA and its Senate cousin PIPA. It’s also the day set aside by activists as national Internet Freedom Day.

Now, this isn’t a celebration of some global declaration that the Internet shall remain free (because that’s hardly the case), but rather a day where activists are asking people to raise awareness about all the issues that are still threatening the net’s freedom.

And there are plenty of issues that demand attention heading into 2013. For instance, the recent suicide of Internet activist Aaron Swartz has caused many people to call for a reform of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA). Also, Congress plans to vote on a new cybersecurity law requiring authorities to get a warrant before obtaining your email messages — something the President’s cybersecurity executive order doesn’t require.

But you should probably be more concerned with the bills and policy that aren’t on the public radar yet, especially since SOPA-author Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Tex.) is head of the House’s science and technology committee.

The official Internet Freedom Day website has a list of tech policy issues as well as a list of events discussing Internet Freedom today. It’s worth checking out if you plan on fighting the good fight.

(Updated)

Aaron Swartz, a cofounder of Reddit, coinventor of RSS, and high-profile activist for open data, has committed suicide, according to MIT newspaper The Tech. He was 26.

The list of Swartz’s contributions to the Internet is long. At age 14, he helped write the RSS 1.0 specification. He was a cofounder of Reddit.* He worked with Internet legal activist Larry Lessig on the creation of Creative Commons. And he created the initial version of web.py, a Python-based framework for websites that is used by Reddit and many other sites.

Beyond his technical contributions, Swartz was also an opinionated writer and an active proponent of freedom of information. He drew attention in 2008 for downloading almost 20 million documents from PACER, a for-fee database of court records, and then distributing them to the public. While the documents in PACER are public domain, Swartz’s actions angered the managers of PACER because they gave the public a way to avoid its usual fees of 10 cents per page. That action drew an FBI investigation but, apparently, no charges.

Swartz got into more serious trouble in 2011 after using MIT’s network to download almost 5 million articles from JSTOR, a nonprofit that provides access to academic journals. That brought a federal indictment and a total of 13 felony counts against Swartz. He could have faced dozens of years in prison and up to $1 million in fines if convicted. His downloading script was aggressive enough that it brought down MIT’s network and prevented access to JSTOR for days at a time, the charges alleged.

It was this case that people close to him suggest was haunting Swartz in his last days. After Swartz turned over his hard drives, JSTOR decided not to pursue legal action. However, MIT apparently did not back off, and U.S. Attorneys Carmen Ortiz and Steve Heymann continued to pursue the case. Lawrence lessage, an activist lawyer with a strong following in the technology community, penned a post yesterday calling it “Prosecutor as bully.”

Update 1/13/2013: The president of MIT has issued a statement on Swartz’s death.

In both the PACER and JSTOR cases, Swartz’s stated goal was to liberate information and make it more freely available.

He was also an activist who used his computer skills and devotion to public information to foster political change, most recently through Demand Progress, a nonprofit that he founded. And he was a prominent opponent of SOPA, a draconian anti-piracy act that the U.S. Congress considered and then rejected under political pressure in 2011. See below for a video from May, 2012, where Swartz explains “how we stopped SOPA.”

Cory Doctorow’s eulogy for Aaron Swartz on BoingBoing does a better job of explaining who this man was, and why he mattered to so many people, than anything else I’ve read this morning.

I never met him, but I am sad this morning just the same. His death is a loss to anyone who uses the Internet.

* UPDATE 10am: Swartz’s contribution to Reddit is in dispute. His startup, Infogami, merged with Reddit; both startups were in the first class of Y Combinator companies.

UPDATE 6:50pm: Swartz’s family issued the following statement earlier today.

Official Statement from the Family and Partner of Aaron Swartz:

Our beloved brother, son, friend, and partner Aaron Swartz hanged himself on Friday in his Brooklyn apartment. We are in shock, and have not yet come to terms with his passing.

Aaron’s insatiable curiosity, creativity, and brilliance; his reflexive empathy and capacity for selfless, boundless love; his refusal to accept injustice as inevitable—these gifts made the world, and our lives, far brighter. We’re grateful for our time with him, to those who loved him and stood with him, and to all of those who continue his work for a better world.

Aaron’s commitment to social justice was profound, and defined his life. He was instrumental to the defeat of an Internet censorship bill; he fought for a more democratic, open, and accountable political system; and he helped to create, build, and preserve a dizzying range of scholarly projects that extended the scope and accessibility of human knowledge. He used his prodigious skills as a programmer and technologist not to enrich himself but to make the Internet and the world a fairer, better place. His deeply humane writing touched minds and hearts across generations and continents. He earned the friendship of thousands and the respect and support of millions more.

Aaron’s death is not simply a personal tragedy. It is the product of a criminal justice system rife with intimidation and prosecutorial overreach. Decisions made by officials in the Massachusetts U.S. Attorney’s office and at MIT contributed to his death. The US Attorney’s office pursued an exceptionally harsh array of charges, carrying potentially over 30 years in prison, to punish an alleged crime that had no victims. Meanwhile, unlike JSTOR, MIT refused to stand up for Aaron and its own community’s most cherished principles.

Today, we grieve for the extraordinary and irreplaceable man that we have lost.

Additionally, the statement noted that a funeral will be held on Tuesday, Jan. 15. Remembrances and donations can be submitted at http://rememberaaronsw.com.

Photo credit: Sage Ross/Flickr

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Most politicians only speak up about inadequate tech policy when there’s an overly complicated bill up for a vote. Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), however, is not one of those politicians.

Wyden spoke at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas today, outlining the topics in tech policy that we need to discuss in 2013 and beyond. He focused on data usage and policy: two themes that have carried over from 2012, and will likely remain under scrutiny for years to come.

Wyden is known for his opposition to SOPA, a bill that attempted to protect copyright laws but could have impeded freedom of speech and led to the wholesale shutdown of websites accused if copyright infringement. He is also known for submitting an amendment to the FISA bill, which allows the government to listen in on Americans’ conversations with those overseas in the name of national security and foreign intelligence. In his amendment, Wyden suggested the government be more transparent and reveal how many people have been affected by the Bush-era bill.

The amendment was shot down.

Now in 2013, Wyden believes we need to get more serious about making sure Internet service providers — wireless and wired alike — are held responsible for making sure no specific types of data are discriminated again. That is, he believes that an Internet Service Provider, such as Comcast, must not slow down speeds if someone is attempting to access streaming content from competitors, while providing great data speeds for its own streaming services. This, of course, is just an example, but you can see the problem.

He also believes we need to look at patents. Last year showed us just how far companies are willing to go to prevent competitors from using their patented technology without paying up. Wyden explained that we need to think of software as “building blocks” and allow people to improve on it.

He also reached back to FISA and CISPA, saying we need rethink how much access to our data the government should have. He suggested we rework the Electronic Communications Privacy Act and put more protections in place that stop law enforcement from checking out Americans’ email communications.

via Ars Technica; Ron Wyden image via his website

At the CEA Industry Forum event, Ohanian described how he and a bunch of other tech friends got involved in the Internet 2012 Bus Tour because of last year’s political battles over online publishing rights.

Ohanian, who left Reddit for a new startup, got involved in fighting the SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) last year. Reddit, which now has 43 million unique users, was a big part of the campaign that stopped the anti-piracy legislation. That movement stirred his passion for defending startups and the Internet against politically motivated crackdowns.

The Internet 2012 Bus Tour just finished its pilgrimage of the heartland of the U.S. The bus was a retread of John McCain’s Straight Talk Express  from the Arizona senator’s failed 2008 presidential bid.

Ohanian said that on the tour he saw many businesses that are using the Internet to get a jumpstart with customers. Above all, those businesses have to be protected, he said.

“The core of this story is econ 101,” he said. “When business works, supply meets demand. Consumers get what they want. Businesses get paid for it. The Internet is making supply and demand line up better.”

The bus traveled in the past few weeks from Denver to Kentucky, following the path of the presidential debates. The bus took its riders to places like Simple Energy in Boulder, Colo., and a startup called Cubelets, which is teaching robotics to kids.

Nobody believes in startups or the Internet like Ohanian. He started Reddit in 2005 after graduating fro the University of Virginia. Conde Nast acquired it, and he started Breadpig in 2007, which he continues to run it today. In 2009, he spent three months working in micro-finance as a Kiva fellow in Armenia.

In 2010, he helped launch travel search web site Hipmunk. He also launched Das Kapital Capital, an investing firm, and he is an “ambassador to the East” for early stage incubator Y Combinator.

He said that he was encouraged to hear that so many small businesses are tapping the Internet to meet demand.

“We are all standing on the shoulders of giants,” he said. “It was so good to hear everywhere we went, ‘we’re hiring.’”

Ohanian was promoting a Declaration of Internet Freedom to make an open Internet work for all.

One thing he wants to do next is a Geek Day, where he and others will ask politicians to pay attention to technology. He said they will “flash mob Washington” and talk to politicians about what they need.

“We can also make sure you don’t do a few things to crush us,” he said. “As we look for swagger in our economy, we are seeing it more and more in the tech sector.”

But the new poster boy for internet freedom has a big-kids message:

“The war for the Internet has begun. Hollywood is in control of politics. The Government is killing innovation. Don’t let them get away with that.”

Whether you agree or disagree, Dotcom is eager to make his case on the new Kim.com, where he calls on American president Barack Obama to “end the war on internet freedom” … and shares 10 facts about the MegaUpload scandal and court cases in an attempt to both exonerate his company and demonstrate the illegal nature of the US government’s actions.

And he explicitly links his message to Dr. Martin Luther King, saying “I have a dream, like Dr. King.” He also links himself implicitly to Che Guevara, the famous Argentinian Marxist who contributed to the Fidel Castro’s revolution in Cuba, by wearing the beret cap in the video.

Watch, listen, enjoy:

Somewhat interestingly … on the bottom of the Kim.com website is a small image: a copyright notice.

And there’s a terms of service, which states that the website is copyrighted and may not be used by organizations, companies, or businesses for any purposes. And one more thing:

Unauthorized framing of or linking to the Website is prohibited.

I don’t think Che had a terms of service page, Kim.

Note:  last week Dotcom published the following letter to the movie industry via The Hollywood Reporter.

Dear Hollywood,

The Internet frightens you. But history has taught us that the greatest innovations were built on rejections. The VCR frightened you, but it ended up making billions of dollars in video sales.

You get so comfortable with your ways of doing business that any change is perceived as a threat. The problem is, we as a society don’t have a choice: The law of human nature is to communicate more efficiently. And the economic benefits of high-speed Internet and unlimited cloud storage are so great that we need to plan for the day when the transfer of terabytes of data will be measured in seconds.

Businesses and individuals will keep looking for faster connectivity, more robust online storage and more privacy. Transferring large pieces of content over the Internet will become common — not because global citizens are evil but because economic forces leading to “speed of light” data transfer and storage are so beneficial to societal growth.

Come on, guys, I am a computer nerd. I love Hollywood and movies. My whole life is like a movie.

I wouldn’t be who I am if it wasn’t for the mind-altering glimpse at the future in Star Wars. I am at the forefront of creating the cool stuff that will allow creative works to thrive in an Internet age. I have the solutions to your problems. I am not your enemy.

Providing “freemium” cloud storage to society is not a crime. What will Hollywood do when smartphones and tablets can wirelessly transfer a movie file within milliseconds?

The very powerful and the very stupid have one thing in common. Instead of changing their views to fit the facts, they try to change the facts to fit their views. The fact remains that the benefits of Megaupload to society outweigh the burdens. But instead of adapting, you imported one of your action-conspiracy movie scripts into the real world. In my view, MPAA CEO and former Sen. Chris Dodd lobbied his friends in the White House to turn me into a villain who has to be destroyed. Due process? Rule of law? Eliminate me and my innovation and worry about the consequences later. Never mind that millions of Megaupload users lost access to cloud data like their wedding photos. Well done, Hollywood, everyone with similar innovations got the message. But wait … You did not read the end of the script.

The people of the Internet will unite. They will help me. And they are stronger than you. We will prevail in the war for Internet freedom and innovation that you have launched. We have logic, human nature and the invisible hand on our side.

As you should have known, our Mega services operated within the boundaries of the law. We had users that spanned from the military to Hollywood to lawyers and doctors. If you are unhappy with that, it is up to you to convince Congress to amend legislation. You tried with SOPA and you failed. As an alternative, you chose to lobby the Justice Department to ignore the law and stage a global show of force and destruction. The only parties a New Zealand court has found to have violated the law in this case are the local police and the FBI.

Regardless of the issues you have with new technologies, you can’t just engage armed forces halfway around the world, rip a peaceful man from his family, throw him in jail, terminate his business without a trial, take everything he owns without a hearing, deprive him of a fair chance to defend himself and do all that while your propaganda machine is destroying him in the media. Is that who you want to be?

There can still be a happy ending. I am working on solutions. Just call me or my lawyers. You know where to find me. Unfortunately I can only do lunch in New Zealand.

This open letter is free of copyright. Use it freely.

Image credit: Kim.com

The Internet Defense League (IDL), an organization dedicated to keeping the internet open, officially kicked off its efforts today with a conference call that included several members of the tech industry and a handful of U.S. congressmen.

The group said it has set up its own version of Batman’s bat signal.

IDL members (you can sign up on the organization’s official website) will have access to tools for automatically alerting people to issues that may hinder the web’s freedom. Members can put a piece of code on their website that will contain updates on issues, send out automated messages on Twitter or Facebook, and receive e-mails. The group calls this effort the “Cat Signal,” appropriately named for the Internet’s nearly universal fascination with kitties.

“This is a call to arms for all the people who are creating something online,” said Reddit and Breadpig founder Alexis Ohanian during today’s call, adding that the Internet needs a watchful protector like DC super-hero Batman. “Whether they’ve got a Twitter account with 20 followers or a website with 30 million visitors, they all have a Gotham, so to speak, to protect.”

“The Internet, from the time it was commercialized, has proven to be a place where innovators come together, or innovate on their own,” said Congressman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) during the call. “Had the government intervened through regulation … the Internet today would look much more like a telephone system and much less like a communications system (that is) an economic engine that has driven so many new and innovative products.”

The IDL — whose members include companies like Reddit, WordPress, Cheezburger Network, Fark, and others — was formed in the wake of successful protests by a number of groups to thwart such now-dead pieces of legislation as the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Protect IP Act (PIPA). The group is attempting to bring together regular Internet users, companies that build their business around the Internet, and others into a permanent coalition able to alert the community to threats to net freedoms in the future. And as VentureBeat previously reported, many IDL members have already come together to sign a Declaration of Internet Freedom.

The IDL wants to be the caped crusader for the Internet. And in keeping with the Batman metaphor, not only is the group scheduling its launch to coincide with the release of the latest Batman movie, but it’s also creating a digital version of the bat signal with its Cat Signal.

Oh, and it’s also got real-life Cat Signals.

Seriously. The organization started a crowdfunding campaign to get real life Cat Signals beaming the IDL’s “cat-signal” icon onto clouds in the sky or neighboring buildings. The group has raised almost its entire $19,000 target to have these spotlights used in five different cities across the globe. Depending on how much you donate, you can even receive IDL trinkets and gear, such as a personal cat signal torch-light key chain, IDL t-shirt, stickers, and more.

Additionally, members have the option of donating money to the organization’s future efforts.

Logistics of flipping on the Cat Signal

During the call there was some discussion about how the IDL would identify each threat, as every member will likely not agree with everything the new organization deems hurtful to the web.

For instance, issues regarding net neutrality would end up being put on a case-by-case basis.

“Net neutrality is a tricky question, because a lot of people really love the idea in theory, but finding a legislative way to do it without attaching a lot of power to a group or (government) agency is incredibly difficult” said EFF’s Rainey Reitman on the call. “It would just depend on the legislation.”

The group will, however, monitor websites, including a IDL subreddit devoted to threats against a free Internet. Based on the limited discussion on the conference call, it didn’t sound like there was any standard procedure for identifying threats that would be fed through the Cat Signal, at least not for the moment.

Some IDL members, like Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), don’t foresee this as a huge problem. “Once there is an issue brought up by either the (IDL) community or through mainstream media, the public is going to drive it,” Wyden said, adding that any issue that needs to be addressed won’t be hard to identify for the organization.

For the immediate future, the IDL plans to keep its eyes on the senate version of cyber-security legislation CISPA.

A group of SOPA/PIPA’s greatest opponents has come together to create the Declaration of Internet Freedom, a move to protect the Internet from censorship.

The declaration comes from a consortium of those who opposed the SOPA and PIPA laws that were shot down in January after a months-long battle between Congress, Hollywood, and the general Internet public. The laws were intended to help content creators be more in control of their intellectual property and be able to take action against websites that use that content illegally. But the details of the bills didn’t sit well with Internet leaders, who felt they could lead to censorship.

If a website was found infringing on a company or individual’s rights, it could be quickly blocked by Internet service providers, stripped from search results, and prevented from conducting business or connecting with services such as PayPal. This sort of interruption is scary for the millions of people who have built their companies online who feared their sites could be taken down without warning if the bills passed.

The coalition formed to oppose SOPA and PIPA, but now that those bills have been shot down, the group wants to ensure the Internet stays as open as possible. A number of well-known organizations have also signed the Declaration of Internet Freedom, including Mozilla, Y Combinator, and Amnesty International. Individuals who have signed the declaration include Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian, former White House chief technology officer Andrew McLaughlin, and Cheezburger Inc. chief executive Ben Huh.

You can see the full Preamble and Declaration below:

Hollywood super-agent Ari Emanuel has a temper. The tech industry better get used to it, because he’s looking north toward Silicon Valley.

Emanuel has built a respected and feared reputation as one of the leading power brokers in Hollywood. The head of the William Morris Endeavor agency, he’s the inspiration for the foul-mouthed, quick-to-anger agent in HBO’s “Entourage.” And when he spoke to a crowd of technorati at the 10th annual All Things Digital conference last night in Rancho Palos Verdes, Calif., he didn’t disappoint.

Within minutes he was describing the technology as mere “pipes,” a taboo point of view that most in the tech industry would prefer to ignore. And by the end of his time on stage, he was showing his temper in a knock-down argument with Joshua Topolsky, the editor of tech site The Verge.

When asked to describe himself, he said, “I’m a nightmare.”

Silicon Valley is clearly in his sights. Silverlake Partners, a Silicon-Valley based private equity company, bought a reported 31 percent stake in WMA earlier this month. WMA has made investments in cloud-based graphics rendering company Otoy, Emanuel said, as well as other tech companies. And he made numerous comments during the evening that demonstrated he understands the strategic value and the important of digital content delivery. He watches movies on his iPad, he has a Roku and an Apple TV at home, and he understands that an increasing number of people, especially young people, are consuming media through the internet, via game consoles, or through DVRs.

“I don’t think a lot of people watch linear TV, but people are consuming a lot of TV,” Emanuel said.

There is one thing Emanuel wants, though: Better policing of international content piracy. And he thinks Google, Verizon, and AT&T are best positioned to make that happen.

“Internationally, there has to be some mechanism to filter people who are stealing things,” Emanuel said. (Update 5/31: Check out Google’s response to Emanuel.)

Now, he’s not sure he has the solution. Emanuel acknowledged right off the bat that SOPA was a bad bill. Nevertheless, he thinks there has to be a solution, and that Silicon Valley companies will be forced to recognize this because of their need for movies, music, and TV.

“One day they’re going to figure out that they’re just big pipes, and they need premium content,” Emanuel said, referring to Silicon Valley tech companies. “Eventually, I think people are going to pay. Not for two cats on a couch doing what they’re doing, but for Aaron Sorkin.”

The catch is that right now, there’s no economic way to make for-pay internet content support the quality of content Emanuel is talking about, Emanuel said, and that means that cable companies’ lock on the shows you want to watch is going to continue for the foreseeable future.

Emanuel doesn’t have the answers. But he definitely sees the shifting tectonics of the entertainment industry, and recognizes the growing importance of tech companies as a distribution channel. That means we’re likely to be seeing a lot more of him.

Watch this video for a taste of Emanuel’s perspective and his temper, and check out AllThingsD’s liveblog of Emanuel’s appearance.

Corrected 9am Pacific: An earlier version of this story mistakenly said that Entourage was an NBC show.

Photo credit: Asa Mathat/All Things Digital

After lots of public outcry, Facebook has published a letter today explaining its support for controversial cyber-security legislation, the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act, or CISPA (PDF).

CISPA intends to grant companies more leeway when it comes to collecting and sharing data about their consumers (or users, in the case of social networks) — specifically, data regarding security threats. Essentially, the bill’s goal is to enable companies to share this information with the government to help fight and prevent cyber security attacks. Currently, most businesses are hesitant to share such precious information with third parties for fear of violating antitrust laws. The bill has broad support from over 100 House co-sponsors from both sides of the aisle.

Critics of CISPA often incorrectly refer to it as a new version of international copyright infringement bill SOPA, which would have given the government the authority to shut down websites accused of internationally committing acts of piracy. But while CISPA only intends to thwart security threats, many believe it could end up paving the way for copyright holders to begin policing the net. Critics also point out that it promotes the idea of companies creating extensive user databases, intercepting or modifying communications under the guise of security, and blindly complying with government requests for private  user information.

Facebook, however, believes CISPA’s cyber security benefits greatly outweigh any of the potential negative impacts critics have cited.

“We recognize that a number of privacy and civil liberties groups have raised concerns about the bill – in particular about provisions that enable private companies to voluntarily share cyber threat data with the government. The concern is that companies will share sensitive personal information with the government in the name of protecting cybersecurity,” wrote Facebook VP of Public Policy Joel Kaplan in the letter. “Facebook has no intention of doing this and it is unrelated to the things we liked about HR 3523 [a.k.a. CISPA] in the first place — the additional information it would provide us about specific cyber threats to our systems and users.”

Facebook isn’t alone in its support of CISPA. Other companies that support the bill include AT&T, Microsoft, Verizon, IBM, Intel, and over 25 others.

Facebook’s entire statement follows below. Let us know your thoughts in the comments section.

Via Facebook:

“More than 845 million people trust Facebook with their information, and maintaining that trust is at the core of everything we do. Keeping the site secure to protect our users and their information requires a combination of technological innovations; around-the-clock coverage from our dedicated staff; and relationships within the broader security community.

A successful defense against bad actors also requires that we have timely information about cyber threats. One challenge we and other companies have had is in our ability to share information with each other about cyber attacks. When one company detects an attack, sharing information about that attack promptly with other companies can help protect those other companies and their users from being victimized by the same attack. Similarly, if the government learns of an intrusion or other attack, the more it can share about that attack with private companies (and the faster it can share the information), the better the protection for users and our systems.

A number of bills being considered by Congress, including the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (HR 3523), would make it easier for Facebook and other companies to receive critical threat data from the U.S. government. Importantly, HR 3523 would impose no new obligations on us to share data with anyone –- and ensures that if we do share data about specific cyber threats, we are able to continue to safeguard our users’ private information, just as we do today.

That said, we recognize that a number of privacy and civil liberties groups have raised concerns about the bill – in particular about provisions that enable private companies to voluntarily share cyber threat data with the government. The concern is that companies will share sensitive personal information with the government in the name of protecting cybersecurity. Facebook has no intention of doing this and it is unrelated to the things we liked about HR 3523 in the first place — the additional information it would provide us about specific cyber threats to our systems and users.

The overriding goal of any cybersecurity bill should be to protect the security of networks and private data, and we take any concerns about how legislation might negatively impact Internet users’ privacy seriously. As a result, we’ve been engaging directly with key lawmakers as well as industry and consumer groups about potential changes to the bill to help address privacy concerns.

The bill’s sponsors, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers and Ranking Member Dutch Ruppersberger, have stated publicly that they are working with privacy and civil liberties groups to address legitimate questions and concerns about how information might be shared with the government under the bill. They’ve made clear that the door is still open to change the bill before it comes to the House floor for consideration.

We hope that as Congress moves forward in considering this and any other cyber legislation, the result will be legislation that helps give companies like ours the tools we need to protect our systems and the security of our users’ information, while also providing those users confidence that adequate privacy safeguards are in place.

Plastic toy soldiers photo via jcjgphotography/Shutterstock

The rising strength of the Pirate party in Europe’s strongest economy is a sign of new concerns among young, highly educated voters who are unhappy with the country’s two major parties – the Christian Democrats (CDU) and Social Democrats (SPD) — who have dominated the political scene there much as the Republican and Democrats do in the United States.

The Green Party has long pushed a pacifist, anti-nuclear platform. “For many young people, the Greens have become an old party. The anti-nuclear theme just doesn’t lure voters like it used to,” said Manfred Guellner, director of Forsa, which conducted this latest poll.

The Pirate Party has been focused on hot button issues like ACTA, the SOPA of Europe. Copyright reform and internet freedom, especially as it relates to government censorship, have become major talking points for the Pirates. This has helped them capture the vote of many in the “informatics sector”, the German equivalent of our tech industry.

Image from Flickr user Sdknex

League for Gamers, a non-profit organization of concerned gamers, wants to bring awareness to a bill currently in consideration in the U.S. House of Representatives which, if passed, would place a warning label on every game rated “E for everbody” and above.

The bill known as House Resolution 4204 will force any game that’s rated by the Entertainment Software Ratings Board (ESRB) to carry a label that would read: “WARNING: Exposure to violent video games has been linked to aggressive behavior.” The League for Gamers’ aim is to discuss this bill and other laws like it with gamers and non-gamers alike.

“This is just the latest of laws that shows a gross misunderstanding of gaming by our representatives,” said League for Gamers Founder Mark Kern in an interview with GamesBeat. Kern hopes to help stand up to this law by “educating non-gamers about what gaming is about.”

The key complaint that League for Gamers has with H.R. 4202 is the “assumed link” (as Kern calls it) between video games and “aggressive behavior” (as the law calls it). In a letter to Representative Joe Baca (D – California), the author of H.R. 4204, Kern wrote that the LFG and its thousands of members “would like an opportunity to hear more more about [Baca's] reasons for promoting warning labels on video games.”

In GamesBeat’s conversation with Kern, the Red 5 Studios CEO explained that even if the law’s author had the scientific data to back up the correlation to aggression, it wouldn’t be fair. “The warning would only be applied to games that are rated by the ESRB,” said Kern. “That means that games like the Flash titles people play on the Internet wouldn’t be subject to equality under the law.”

League for Gamers was formed in response to the Stop Online Piracy Act that was introduced to the U.S. House of Representatives in October of 2011. Many gamers and game developers opposed the bill which would have provided the government with the ability to remove a site from the Internet if a copyright holder complained that the website was infringing upon its rights. When the Entertainment Software Association, an established video game lobbying group, came out in favor of the bill, the LFG  formed to speak up for gamers who disagreed with the bill and with the ESA’s decision to support it.

“The next step is to get more members,” said Kern. The developer, who is currently working on the massively multiplayer-online title Firefall, is taking his group to this weekend’s Penny Arcade Expo East to do just that. “Sure, we’ll have t-shirts to give out, but it’s about education.”

PAX East attendees interested in learning more about the League for Gamers can find the group present inside the Red 5 Studio’s Firefall booth.

At South By Southwest, we got a chance to talk with Jon Vanhala, Universal Music Group’s senior vice president of digital.

While some of us on the technology side see post-SOPA relations between our industry and the entertainment industry as strained, Vanhala feels that, although SOPA and PIPA put pressure on both parties, the collaboration and cooperation between music and tech has never been better.

Check out this clip, and stay tuned for more SXSW coverage.

U.S. Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) tackled questions about technology and anti-piracy legislation from users of community news-sharing site Reddit yesterday.

Having Issa participate in a Reddit AMA (Ask Me Anything) is a big deal because the site generates over two billion monthly page views and regularly conducts discussions that are entirely policed by its own users.

Issa is head of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, strong opponent of the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) as well as the Senate’s Protect Intellectual Property Act (PIPA), and a vocal critic of the European “trade agreement” ACTA. Issa recently published the entire ACTA text online, as VentureBeat previously reported. He’s also a self-proclaimed “Internet defender” with 37 patents to his name. Basically, that makes Issa one of the most qualified members of Congress when it comes to issues involving patent and copyright legislation.

Some of the most popular questions Reddit users asked Issa centered on the government’s involvement in curbing piracy through legislation.

“Any solution needs to be inclusive of everyone involved or impacted — content producers, copyright holders, individual Internet users, digital job creators, etc.,” Issa wrote in response to a question about a valid approach to preventing piracy without having the government infringe on a citizen’s basic privacy rights. He also explained why the OPEN Act, which he authored, is a better alternative than SOPA. “I think the OPEN Act is a good balance of increasing protections for our inventors and artists without giving government new, invasive and Internet-destabilizing powers.”

When asked why so many publishing companies are trying to limit our freedoms on the internet, Issa replied: “Publishers and all intellectual property owners will always take the most strident position, in an attempt to maximize their return on their investment. The Internet will always have those who will seek less restrictions on intellectual property, regardless for the need for a return on the investment of the IP creator.

“I fought to defeat SOPA and PIPA because they were bad pieces of legislation and went too far in harming the Internet,” he added.

Many people criticized SOPA and PIPA because they would have given federal authorities the right to shut down any foreign-based website accused of infringing on copyrights and committing acts of piracy. Those pieces of legislation were far too vague in regards to how “foreign website” was defined and didn’t offer enough protection to those that were being falsely accused of piracy by copyright holders trying to eliminate competition or negative criticism.

Despite Issa’s attempts to appeal to Reddit’s masses by mentioning his love of gadgets and Battlestar Galactica, the site’s users also drilled the congressman with some hardball questions. For instance, one Redditor asked how Issa could claim to be a defender of the Internet while supporting legislation in 2008 that allowed the government to conduct warrentless wiretapping.

“After 9/11, an extraordinary amount of cooperation by our communications industry was necessary to find out who was responsible for the deaths of thousands of Americans, and who continued to pose an active threat to Americans in our country and around the world,” wrote Issa. “Americans in the telecom industry were called into classified sessions and asked to help in this effort and were asked to tell no one, not even their own coworkers. Some would say Bush had no right to do that, but that’s a fight (with) the Executive Branch and Congress.”

While not everyone was pleased with Issa’s responses, the majority of people who had their question answered seemed appreciative. The congressman said he’d attempt to answer more questions from the Reddit post later today.

Photo of Rep. Darrell Issa browsing Reddit via Issa/Flickr

“ACTA represents as great a threat to an open Internet as SOPA and PIPA and wasdrafted with even less transparency and input from digital citizens,” said California Congressman Darrell Issa. That’s why Rep. Issa is opening up ACTA to the public using an online platform called Madison, part of the #OPEN act introduced in January.

“This agreement was negotiated in secret and many of its vague provisions would clearly increase economic uncertainty, while imposing onerous new regulations on job creators, Internet service providers, innovators and individual Americans,” Rep. Issa said in a statement emailed to VentureBeat this morning. “Opening ACTA to taxpayers and stakeholder in Madison will help gather crucial input, while delivering the transparency they deserve.”

Negotiations around ACTA actually began four years ago, but the Obama administration only signed on in October of 2011, joined by nations like Canada, Japan, Korea and Australia. As Rep. Issa sees it, this is both an issue of intellectual property and legislative process:

No Transparency: ACTA is a multilateral intellectual property agreement that was negotiated in secret, excluding American taxpayers and key stakeholders who would be impacted by it. Despite the fact that ACTA has huge implications for the public, until now few steps have been taken to give the public input into this process.

Circumvents Congress & the Constitution: While ACTA carries several provisions that directly affect U.S. trade and intellectual property law, the Bush and Obama Administrations appear to have violated Congress’ constitutional authority over policymaking in these areas. Adding insult to constitutional injury, the Administration refuses to even classify ACTA as a treaty, which would then require ratification by the U.S. Senate. Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) raised these troubling issues in an October 12, 2011 letter to President Obama.

Vague & Far-Reaching: Like it’s domestic counterparts SOPA and PIPA, much of ACTA is vague, with consequences for individuals and stakeholders that could reach far beyond the agreement’s original intent. ACTA also contains no safeguards against wrongful cases of intellectual property rights infringement.

We’ve embedded the document below so that you can go over the fine print yourself. Section 5 beginning on page 15 covers enforcement of intellectual property rights in the digital environment. A few highlights we came across:

• Each Party shall provide that, in civil judicial proceedings concerning the enforcement of intellectual property rights, its judicial authorities have the authority to issue an order against a party to desist from an infringementEach Party shall provide that, in civil judicial proceedings concerning the enforcement of intellectual property rights, its judicial authorities have the authority to order the infringer who, knowingly or with reasonable grounds to know, engaged in infringing activity to pay the right holder damages adequate to compensate for the injury the right holder has suffered as a result of the infringement. In determining the amount of damages for infringement of intellectual property rights, a Party’s judicial authorities shall have the authority to consider, inter alia, any legitimate measure of value the right holder submits, which may include lost profits, the value of the infringed goods or services measured by the market price, or the suggested retail price.

SOPA author Lamar Smith is sponsoring a bill named the “Protecting Children From Internet Pornographers Act of 2011″ (H.R. 1981). The bill is not brand new, mind you, but with so many other oppressive attempts by the government to invade privacy and control the Internet lately, it has managed to slip by relatively unnoticed until now.

The bill (which can be read here) would alter U.S. code Chapter 18 section 2703 “Required Disclosure of Customer Communications or Records” so that all Internet service providers would need to store your IP address for at least 12 months, along with any highly sensitive personal information such as credit card data.

IP addresses are assigned to devices connected to the Internet and used to identify and locate that device. Most users are assigned a dynamic IP address, which is only temporary. Static IP addresses, which are permanent, are much less frequent. H.R. 1981 would require all IP addresses to be stored by Internet service providers.

Not only does that treat everyone who uses the Internet (slyly referred to in the bill as “unregistered sex offenders”) like a criminal under the transparent guise of stopping child pornography, but it also puts your personal information at risk, while legally protecting service providers. Previously this information could only be obtained with a subpoena; that would no longer be the case.

Submitted last year, the bill is grabbing attention not only because of the potential breach of constitutional privacy, but also due to the existence of a Canadian equivalent, C-30, which has been making headlines lately.

Introduced by Public Safety Minister Vic Toews, Bill C-30 (the “Protecting Children from Internet Predators Act”) extends the currently unlawful personal data archiving to mobile carriers. The bill also allows any police officer to access the data without a warrant under vague “exceptional circumstances.”

Public outrage was swift, with Twitter users worldwide trending the #TellVicEverything hashtag by spamming him with the minute details of their everyday lives. While Toews laughed it off and said he found it “very amusing,” he was a little less amused when an anonymous Twitter account started sharing his own personal data, including initimate details of his divorce. An investigation traced the Twitter account’s IP address back to the House of Commons (the Canadian version of the US House of Representatives).

In a recent interview, Ontario Privacy Commissioner Ann Cavoukian called the Canadian bill “disingenuous,” referring to its alleged focus on child pornography. ”My guess is the reason they are doing this is because they don’t have a strong case and in order to engage the public and their support, they have to make it about the protection of our children,” Cavoukian said. ”It’s nonsense.”

“You can infer, by connecting the dots of the surfing habits online, a great deal of very personal information about an individual. And I object to that kind of information being accessible without a warrant,” said Cavoukian. She also pointed out that the bill would require service providers to install surveillance measures, which would ultimately raise prices for Internet users.

Cavoukian’s comments refer to Bill C-30 but can easily be applied to the virtually identical H.R. 1981 in the U.S.

I’m left wondering how long it will be before one of these bills slips through. It seems like every other week there’s another shady bill that’s somehow “worse than SOPA!!11!!” floating dangerously close to becoming a law. Are Reddit and Wikipedia and Google going to fight each and every one of them?

The fact that H.R. 1981 — where everyone who uses the Internet is treated like a suspect — even exists is mind-boggling, and more than a little scary.

Image via Threadless.

Image from Flickr user Uncle Catherine

Influential New York investor Fred Wilson was one of the earliest and loudest opponents of the anti-piracy bill SOPA. He worried that it would threaten sites he considered legitimate, like Reddit, or Tumblr, which is backed by his firm Union Square Ventures. But as CNET’s Greg Sandoval reports, Wilson said yesterday that he supports the idea of an independent body which would create a blacklist for known pirate sites.

“If we created an independent body that essentially created a black and white list,” Wilson told a crowd of media executives at the Paley Center in New York. “The black list are those sites we all know are bad news. We all know who the good guys are who are truly licensed and are operating legitimately. And we know who the bad guys are.” CNET reports that Wilson named Hulu, Netflix, Rdio, Spotify and Rhapsody among the good guys.

The tech industry and the entertainment industry have very different ideas of what a pirate site looks like. If they both had equal representation on this independent body, perhaps they could agree on the most obvious villains. Wilson suggested services like MegaUpload, Pirate Bay and the various BitTorrent sites as the kind of sites that would be on the blacklist. “Using technology, we train our youth to know that they’re doing something bad and how they could do something that’s good.”

But piracy is never that black and white. Tumblr, which Union Square Ventures invested in, certainly doesn’t fall under the category of “good guys who are truly licensed. (emphasis mine)” Instead, it’s a free-wheeling community where users often post copyrighted music and images. While you can argue that it falls under the DMCA safe harbor passed by Congress, and isn’t a pirate site looking to profit by distributing tons of illegal content, it is a home to many blogs that distribute links to full downloads of new albums.

As Wilson said at the conference:

“We gotta fix the system so that the content is available legally on the internet in a way that it is available for people to consume it. As convenient as turning on your TV and watching HBO, that’s how convenient it has to be. The content industry has not made this content convenient to access on the internet and as a result everybody, and I mean everybody, is a pirate. Okay so in the world where everybody is breaking the law, you gotta look at the law. Is it the right law?”

Updated with charts from Google.

Google confirmed today that its users in Iran are being blocked by a new regulation against access to secure browsing, or HTTPS websites. The block has been in action since February 10.

In celebration of the overthrow of its monarchy in 1979, Iran decided to block Internet access to all encrypted websites using the “HTTPS” format. That means anyone using the Internet in Iran won’t be able to connect to sites such as Google, Facebook, banking and finance websites, or Yahoo. Iran is severely tightening the reigns on Internet usage overall, and not just on the digital front. Physical Internet cafes are now being forced to install cameras and record the faces of everyone who uses their services.

Google confirmed the block to Bloomberg. More than 30 million are unable to connect to their Gmail and Hotmail accounts. Other Google services such as YouTube and Google Videos have also fallen due to the new regulations.

Google pointed us to its Transparency Reports to see the flow of traffic to its different services. In the case of Gmail, traffic from Iran took a nose dive on February 9th and flat-lined for the following few days. Though, it does look as if some traffic is coming back. This may be in relation to work-arounds that some developers have been posting to forums such as Hacker News. YouTube has generally been dead for Iran since 2009, except for a small spike in 2011 when Google “changed how it classified some traffic.”

Because Iran is sanctioned by the US, Google cannot try to contact the Iranian government and find out why it is no longer allowing people access to HTTPS websites. However, the reason is probably simple. Using HTTPS encrypts the conversation that happens between a person’s computer and the website they are accessing. This is a security measure to make sure sensitive information isn’t intercepted between computers, but it also allows people to interact secretly, without broadcasting their activities. It could be argued that Iran would like to monitor the Internet activity of its people, and allowing them to use HTTPS would block its ability to do so.

Censorship has been the talk of the last six months, with Congress’ proposed SOPA and PIPA bills, which were intended to stop online piracy, but may have used overreaching technology, blocking more than intended. The blocking of social media and Internet access during the Arab Spring in Egypt also caused outcries. In June, the United Nations voted that Internet access was a human right given its ability to connect us and its deep roots into our lives.

Mouth image via Shutterstock

Monday, more than 70 organizations signed an open letter addressed to the House of Representatives and the Senate.

“Now is the time for Congress to take a breath, step back, and approach the issues from a fresh perspective,” the letter reads. “The concerns are too fundamental and too numerous to be fully addressed through hasty revisions to these bills. Nor can they be addressed by closed door negotiations among a small set of inside the-beltway stakeholders.”

The letter, embedded below, comes in the aftermath of a powerful Internet protest that helped to defeat, at least temporarily, the Stop Online Piracy Act and the Protect IP Act, two controversial pieces of IP legislation that were making their way through Congress. But, as the letter notes, the bills aren’t dead yet.

“Finally, any future debates concerning intellectual property law in regards to the Internet must avoid taking a narrow, single-industry perspective,” the letter continues. “Too often, Congress has focused exclusively on areas where some rights holders believe existing law is too weak, without also considering the ways in which existing policies have undermined free speech and innovation.”

Unfortunately, as we see it, the letter is far too generic in purpose, weak in message, and broad in audience to make any real impact on Congress. The clout of its signers, however, may help the letter win more favor from those who oppose SOPA and PIPA. And, ideally, the letter could rally enough support to keep the web focused on the task at hand: preventing Congress from spitting out irresponsible legislation.

http://www.scribd.com/doc/80672293/Public-Knowledge-Internet-Letter-to-Congress

[via The Verge]

Photo credit: vgm8383/Flickr

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

A five year-old legal battle between Viacom and Google-owned YouTube over copyrighted content continues to clog up the U.S. court system because Viacom, parent company of Paramount Pictures and MTV, believes there’s an important principle at stake, president and CEO Philippe Dauman said Tuesday.

Dauman, in an interview at the D: Dive Into Media event, defended his company’s ongoing litigation against YouTube, the purveyor of user-generated content, despite a 2010 federal ruling establishing that the video-sharing site is protected under the “safe harbor” provision of the U.S. copyright law, and is ultimately protected from liability so long as it removes infringing content at the request of rights holders.

“The U.S. justice system works in a slow and deliberate way,” Dauman said somewhat facetiously.

Viacom first brought suit again YouTube in 2007 for $1 billion in damages over the unauthorized use of Viacom content, inducing the use of clips from “The Daily Show” and “The Colbert Report,” between 2005 and 2008. The case was dismissed in June of 2010, in what was deemed a landmark victory for YouTube. But the decision didn’t sit well with Viacom, and the company sought to resuscitate the suit in October 2011.

Dauman referred to the status quo of needing to report infringed content as a “whack-a-mole system,” and argued for a more seamless technology solution that ensures copyright content is not infringed upon in the first place. He said Viacom is still fighting Google (a company Dauman referred to as “great”) out of principle, and is hopeful for a decision to a single legal issue that he believes will establish an important precedent for the entire industry.

The Viacom president, who fielded a variety of questions from interviewer Peter Kafka, also expressed his ongoing support for both the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Protect IP Act (PIPA). There was a lot of rhetoric and misinformation around SOPA and PIPA, Dauman lamented, that amounted to a “religious dogma” and created a “mob mentality.”

Ultimately, Daumen believes that PIPA, which would have been the dominant bill should it have passed, would have emerged as a very “responsible” bill.

“There are two great innovative industries where there are world leaders … that’s the content industry and broadly speaking the Internet industry,” Dauman said. The industries are symbiotic, he said, and should combine forces and create innovation. “We should be working together.”

Image via AllThingsD

Costolo, CEO of a company that has historically been as flighty as it name suggests, appeared every bit the able-minded and focused leader Twitter needs to succeed in a social landscape dominated by Facebook and under siege by Google.

Costolo, speaking at the D: Dive Into Media conference, was an unwavering force to be reckoned with Monday night, responding to queries with candor, strength of position, and the occasional joke.

Costolo was firm in his remarks to interviewer Peter Kafka on the subject matter of Google and the hotly debated Search Plus Your World update. Costolo, a former Googler himself, made it clear that the modified Google search experience, which now favors profiles and content from Google’s social network over Twitter content, is not in the best interest of the searcher.

Google should return the search results that people are looking for, he said unequivocally, adding that the search giant has crawled 300 billion Twitter pages to date, and has all the data it needs to include Twitter content in social search results.

But should Google stick to its guns, Twitter would remain unaffected, Costolo argued. Twitter is growing faster than it has ever grown before (it has 100 million active users), irrespective of what Google and Facebook are doing, he said. And in Costolo’s mind, all three social competitors can not only co-exist but succeed on their own merits.

As for whether Twitter is, as has been recently accused, bending to the whims of governments around the world and censoring its content, Costolo said the company is doing no such thing. The CEO stressed that, as VentureBeat originally reported, the company is focused on making sure tweets remain as accessible as possible. If issued an applicable, legal order to remove content, Twitter has the capability to withhold that content from just the users in a particular country and will publish these behaviors to Chilling Effects, Costolo explained.

“There’s been no change in our stance in respect to content on Twitter,” he said. “We want to be able to leave the content up for as many people as possible … this is the most honest, transparent, and forward-looking way for a company to deal with [takedown requests].”

And Twitter, he explained, has no intention to enter or appease China, a country infamous for its censorship of web content. “We’re already 100 percent blocked in China,” Costolo said. “We can’t go into China … We would love for people in China to be able to use Twitter the way we want them to … but the current environment doesn’t enable us to do that.”

The head of the information network also explained away Twitter’s decision to opt-out of participating in a web-wide protest of SOPA and PIPA, two now defunct controversial pieces that were previously making their way through Congress. “When you’ve got an amplifier like Twitter … you don’t pull the batteries out of the microphone,” he said, pointing to the platform’s ability to disperse more than 3.9 million SOPA and PIPA-related tweets that day.

“It is certainly the case that piracy is an issue for content creators,” he added. Twitter, he said, views SOPA and PIPA as flawed legislation created without input form both sides (Silicon Valley and Hollywood), and would have amounted to messy laws. But Twitter hopes for a middle ground, he said, and employs more than 45 people in its trust and safety department to handle piracy-related requests.

Perhaps most demonstrative of a new regime at Twitter was how Costolo managed to weave a question about chairman Jack Dorsey’s role at the company into a way to showcase his individual authority. Ever since Dorsey returned to work at Twitter in March of last year, the original creator has been glorified as the company’s true savior. But Costolo, who stressed that he and Dorsey have a a strong working relationship, made it known that he mans the ship, while Dorsey works to help guide its course. Dorsey, he said, has three primary responsibilities: to be a product visionary, to help with company branding, and to serve as an external Twitter spokesperson.

But if there’s one thing to take away from Monday night’s talk it’s this: Don’t mess with Dick. The CEO demonstrated that he, as PandoDaily put it, has “serious cojones.”

[Image via AllThingsD]

Twenty-two of the European Union’s 27 member states signed the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) in Tokyo on January 26. In response, thousands of Poles marched in the streets, members of Poland’s parliament donned Guy Fawkes masks, and a member of the European Parliament quit in protest.

By contrast, when U.S. President Barack Obama signed the ACTA treaty on behalf of the U.S. on October 1, 2011, few in this country noticed. But when a somewhat similar bill, the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), entered Congress the following month, it spurred massive opposition that culminated in a worldwide internet protest on January 18. SOPA is now all but dead, while ACTA lives on.

So what is ACTA and why are some people so upset about it? Let’s take a look.

What is ACTA?

The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement is an international treaty aimed at giving countries the ability to stop copyright infringement and other forms of intellectual property theft. It’s meant to create an international legal framework so that different countries can work with one another more cooperatively. You can read the full text of ACTA (.pdf).

Why are Europeans upset?

One major reason is that the countries that have signed ACTA conducted negotiations largely in secret. The European Parliament was not fully involved and citizens of the signing countries were not consulted. The French member of the European Parliament who quit, Kader Arif, issued a furious statement objecting to ACTA, according to ZDNet UK:

I want to denounce as the greatest of all the process that led to the signing of this agreement: no association of civil society, lack of transparency from the beginning of negotiations, successive postponements of the signing of the text without any explanation being given, setting aside the claims of the European Parliament [despite those views being] expressed in several resolutions of our Assembly. … This agreement may [have a] major impact on the lives of our citizens, and yet everything is done [so that] the European Parliament has no say. I will not participate in this charade.

What about the U.S.?

Senator Ron Wyden objected to Obama’s signing of ACTA on the grounds that it’s unconstitutional for a President to sign a treaty without the consent of two-thirds of the Senate. Obama did not consult the Senate, so there are some grounds for thinking that ACTA is not a legitimately-signed treaty.

What powers does ACTA give copyright holders?

The governments signing on to ACTA have pledged

• to give copyright holders a way to request personal information about suspected infringers from ISPs (with a warrant),
• to give copyright holders legal means to pursue people suspected of circumventing copyright protection or DRM technologies,
• to seize goods at their borders if they’re suspected of containing infringing content.

In addition, ACTA gives rights holders the ability to collect damages equal to the market value of the infringing content. In other words, if you copy an album that sells for $15 or a game that goes for $50, that’s how much you owe.

What else has got people upset?

Unlike U.S. copyright law or the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, ACTA includes no fair use provisions. For instance, the DMCA lets people subvert copy-protection technologies in order to make personal backups, and copyright law in general allows exceptions for copies made for educational or scholarly use. ACTA has no such provisions. As an international treaty, it’s meant to supersede national law — which brings us back to the question, in the U.S., of whether this is a legitimately ratified treaty.

If I’m not pirating music, I don’t have to worry, right?

Not really. ACTA also applies to patents, and might criminalize possession of otherwise legal generic “grey market” drugs, if you happen to be passing through a country where those drugs are still  under patent. It could also impose obligations on customs and border patrol agents to determine whether material infringes intellectual property: Imagine how that might work when you’re flying into a new country or driving across the border from Canada.

To learn more, read Mike Masnick on TechDirt and M. Scott Fulton on ReadWriteWeb.

Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales had fighting words for Motion Picture Association of America chairman Christopher Dodd, calling the former Senator and current lobbyist out on his recent threats and pronouncing that the MPAA should fire its chief.

“Candidly, those who count on quote ‘Hollywood’ for support need to understand that this industry is watching very carefully who’s going to stand up for them when their job is at stake,” Dodd said to Fox News recently. “Don’t ask me to write a check for you when you think your job is at risk and then don’t pay any attention to me when my job is at stake.”

Wales argued that these transparent statements make the MPAA out to be a corrupt, Congress-buying organization. He also challenged Dodd’s assertion that Wikipedia’s decision to blackout its site in protest of SOPA, an effort Wales said was a “massive success,” constituted an abuse of power.

10 million people contacted Congress, Wales said. “That’s not an abuse of power, that’s democracy,” he said. “[Dodd] had best get used to it.”

The heated war of words between Wales and Dodd has to do with each others’ opposing viewpoints on SOPA and PIPA, two almost-dead pieces of legislation that would give the U.S. government and copyright holders the authority to seek court orders against foreign websites associated with infringing intellectual property. Wales is so opposed to the legislation that he helped champion a web-wide protest.

But Wales told the audience at the Design Life Digital conference in Munich that he believes digital piracy is a very real problem that needs to be addressed with better legislation. “I hope to see … a window of opportunity for Hollywood to come to the table and talk to Silicon Valley with a little more humility,” Wales said. “The laws need to be tweaked … but we do not need a Draconian new regime.”

[Image via Hubert Burda Media/Flickr]

Disclosure: The Digital Life Design conference paid my way to Munich. VentureBeat’s coverage of the conference remains objective and independent.

“While SOPA and PIPA may be postponed from congress, this does not guarantee that our Internet rights will be upheld,” said an Anonymous member in a dramatic YouTube video proposing the take-down.

Last week websites “blacked out” as a form of protest against SOPA and PIPA, bills aimed at reducing copyright infringement at the cost of what some say will be censorship. Soon thereafter the government took down file sharing website Megaupload for copyright infringement, sending Anonymous on a hunt to take down various record labels’ websites, as well as the Department of Justice. Now, for at least one Anonymous member, taking down Facebook is the next way U.S. citizens can get the government’s attention.

“There is no way you can get caught,” said the member. “Hundreds of thousands of us citizens and those of the Anonymous idea will all be participating … This is your chance. Our chance. The fate of the Internet rests in your hands.”

In a YouTube video posted this morning, the group calls on the U.S. public to download the same tool used to take down the DOJ website last week. The tool is called LOIC, or a Low Orbit Ion Cannon. This tool shuts websites down by launching information packets at the servers thousands of times. When a website’s servers are processing so many access requests, it overloads and shuts down. But Facebook isn’t just a computer in a Harvard dorm room anymore. It has a massive number of servers, aimed at holding the site up for its 800 million members.

“While it is true that Facebook has at least 60,000 servers, it is still possible to bring it down,” said the Anonymous member. “Anonymous needs the help of the people.”

The tool must be used at the same time in order to be affective on this many servers, according to the member, who has set the time of 12am (we’re assuming UTC) on January 28 for the attack. Around that time, watch out for links on the Twitter handles of Anonymous members. During last week’s attacks on the DOJ, some members were tricking people into “helping the cause” by providing links to LOIC, which would then use an innocent bystander’s computer to take down the targeted site.

In 2011, the group vowed to “kill” the social network on November 5, the same date Guy Fawkes, a member of the Gunpowder Plot, was arrested watching explosives to be used in an assassination attempt against King James I. Soon after announcing its intentions, other members of Anonymous explained the attack was created by exterior Anonymous members and was not supported by most of the group.

Whether this one is legitimate or not, the group seems to have a sense of humor. To send LOIC off into a server crashing rampage, a user must click a button reading, ” IMMA CHARGIN MAH LASER.”  And, for Anonymous, these lasers are set to stun.

hat tip CNET

PIPA and SOPA would give the U.S. government and copyright holders the authority to seek court orders against foreign websites associated with infringing intellectual property. Following a widespread online protest from prominent web companies, authors of both pieces of legislation have decided that the bills need to be reworked before being put to the House or Senate for vote.

When asked about SOPA, Genachowski narrowly avoided disclosing whether he was pro or anti SOPA, but said that the vital importance of preserving a free and open Internet does not have to be at the odds with legislation that ensures effective mechanisms are in place to enforce intellectual property.

This wishful-thinking viewpoint is in direct contrast to Y Combinator creator Paul Graham’s recent call for the death of Hollywood.

“Hollywood appears to have peaked. If it were an ordinary industry (film cameras, say, or typewriters), it could look forward to a couple decades of peaceful decline,” Graham said. “But this is not an ordinary industry. The people who run it are so mean and so politically connected that they could do a lot of damage to civil liberties and the world economy on the way down. It would therefore be a good thing if competitors hastened their demise.”

Genachowski, however, hopes that engineers and Internet entrepreneurs can work together with IP rights holders to figure out a way to preserve the open architecture of the web and give content creators the projection they’re entitled to. He did not elaborate on how a compromise between the two dissenting parties could be achieved.

Genachowski also talked at length about the FCC’s mission to free up more wireless spectrum, echoing the statements he made at the Consumer Electronics Show in Vegas. The largest need for change in regulatory policy is mobile and spectrum, he said. The demand generated by smartphones and tablets is going up 35 fold a year, but the supply of spectrum has stayed essentially flat, he added.

The chairman is advocating for a two-sided auction system, as previously laid out, that would allow spectrum holders to exchange spectrum they’re not using in exchange for proceeds. The FCC would realign the spectrum, free it up and put it on the market in auctions that could generate up to $25 billion in profits.

The U.S. is ahead of most of the world in rolling out 4G and will be the first country where the spectrum crisis will hit, but every country will face this problem, he warned.

Disclosure: The Digital Life Design conference paid my way to Munich. VentureBeat’s coverage of the DLD 12 conference remains objective and independent.

[Image via Hubert Burda Media/Flickr]

Smith is the author of the House version of PIPA, the Stop Online Piracy Act. Last week, he announced that a vote on SOPA would be delayed until February, but the delay could actually end up being much longer — like forever.

Smith’s new statement implicitly acknowledges the mounting tide of anti-SOPA sentiment that culminated Wednesday with many websites going offline or “blacking out” their homepages, anti-SOPA protests in several cities, and millions of people signing petitions against the proposed legislation.

“I have heard from the critics and I take seriously their concerns regarding proposed legislation to address the problem of online piracy,” Smith said today. “It is clear that we need to revisit the approach on how best to address the problem of foreign thieves that steal and sell American inventions and products.”

PIPA and SOPA give the U.S. government and copyright holders the authority to seek court orders against foreign websites associated with infringing, pirating and/or counterfeiting intellectual property. It could drastically change the way the Internet operates if either bill is voted into law. For instance, if a website is accused of containing copyright-infringing content (like a song, picture, video clip etc.), the site could be blocked by ISPs (like Comcast), de-indexed from search engines, and even prevented from doing business online with services like PayPal.

Based on Smith’s statements, it seems unlikely that SOPA will get sent to the House floor for a vote before the country holds elections for the 113th Congress — meaning that SOPA is essentially dead.

“The House Judiciary Committee will postpone consideration of the legislation until there is wider agreement on a solution,” Smith said.

Much of the initial push behind SOPA and PIPA came from large media companies (Hollywood) that claim they take millions of dollars in financial losses due to piracy from organizations outside of the U.S. However, the methods SOPA and PIPA want to use for thwarting piracy have raised lots of opposition from the technology industry as well as millions of U.S. citizens.

So, reaching a legislative solution for curbing piracy that both tech business leaders and Hollywood can agree on probably won’t happen anytime soon.

However, both sides do seem willing to start talking about the issue of stopping piracy. The pro-SOPA Motion Picture Association of America’s president and former senator Chris Dodd has recently even suggested that the two sides start meeting.

We’ve pasted the House Judiciary Committee’s full statement below:

Washington, D.C. — House Judiciary Committee Chairman Lamar Smith (R-Texas) today issued the following statement in response to the Senate decision to postpone consideration of legislation to help combat online piracy.

Chairman Smith:  “I have heard from the critics and I take seriously their concerns regarding proposed legislation to address the problem of online piracy. It is clear that we need to revisit the approach on how best to address the problem of foreign thieves that steal and sell American inventions and products.

“The problem of online piracy is too big to ignore. American intellectual property industries provide 19 million high-paying jobs and account for more than 60 percent of U.S. exports. The theft of America’s intellectual property costs the U.S. economy more than $100 billion annually and results in the loss of thousands of American jobs.  Congress cannot stand by and do nothing while American innovators and job creators are under attack.

“The online theft of American intellectual property is no different than the theft of products from a store.  It is illegal and the law should be enforced both in the store and online.

“The Committee will continue work with copyright owners, Internet companies, financial institutions to develop proposals that combat online piracy and protect America’s intellectual property.  We welcome input from all organizations and individuals who have an honest difference of opinion about how best to address this widespread problem.  The Committee remains committed to finding a solution to the problem of online piracy that protects American intellectual property and innovation.”

The House Judiciary Committee will postpone consideration of the legislation until there is wider agreement on a solution.

The video game industry trade group, the Entertainment Software Association, (headed by Mike Gallagher, pictured) issued a statement today that said, ”From the beginning, ESA has been committed to the passage of balanced legislation to address the illegal theft of intellectual property found on foreign rogue sites. Although the need to address this pervasive threat to our industry’s creative investment remains, concerns have been expressed about unintended consequences stemming from the current legislative proposals.”

“Accordingly, we call upon Congress, the Obama Administration, and stakeholders to refocus their energies on producing a solution that effectively balances both creative and technology interests. As an industry of innovators and creators, we understand the importance of both technological innovation and content protection and are committed to working with all parties to encourage a balanced solution.”

Earlier, the ESA said that it was in favor of SOPA, which drew huge protests because of provisions in the bill that seemed tantamount to censorship of internet sites in favor of Hollywood congolmerates. The SOPA vote has been delayed, due in large part to huge protests that arose on the internet.

The ESA’s previous stance didn’t seem particularly friendly toward consumers, and some groups took it to task. The bill drew opposition from the Entertainment Consumers Association, and it prompted Mark Kern, CEO of Red 5 Studios, to form a rival game organization called the League For Gamers.

In a statement, the League for Gamers said, “While we applaud the ESA’s decision, we wished it had come before the death of these bills, rather than afterwards. Perhaps most significantly, it means that gamers have become an incredibly important voice in the gaming industry, and that the LFG has won it’s first battle with the aid of all of your support.”

The LFG added, “The fact that the ESA was a huge financial backer of this legislation, means the LFG must remain an ever vigilant proponent for gamers and like-minded developers against future misguided legislation.
SOPA and PIPA will surely resurface under new names, with perhaps different wording, but with ever bit as destructive force as the original versions. We will be there. We will never forget. We will always be watching.”

Meanwhile, the Consumer Electronics Association chief executive Gary Shapiro declared victory in “What we did right and Hollywood did wrong” in a post. Shapiro said that the “content lobby” spent a lot of money in favor of the bill, “but we won a big one this week as a public avalanche of input persuaded politicians that they should actually read the legislation they co-sponsor and support.” The CEA warned legislators of the “bad legislation,” Shapiro said. At the Consumer Electronics Association, Shapiro called on an “army of geeks” to defeat the legislation.

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PIPA, which was previously scheduled for a vote Jan. 24, is essentially the Senate version of the House’s proposed Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) legislation. And like SOPA, it gives both the U.S. government and copyright holders the authority to seek court orders against websites associated with infringing, pirating and/or counterfeiting intellectual property. If it becomes law, it could drastically change the way the Internet operates. Under PIPA, if a website is accused of containing copyright-infringing content (like a song, picture, video clip etc.), the site could be blocked by ISPs (like Comcast), de-indexed from search engines, and even prevented from doing business online with services like PayPal.

The news comes just days after several sites across the internet participated in a national protest against the bill. Reddit, Craigslist, Wikipedia, and several others instituted a full blackout of services, replacing their homepages with opposition messages about PIPA and SOPA. Following the blackout protests, 25 U.S. senators publicly came out against the bill. And yesterday, Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell urged his party to revoke support for PIPA.

In the statement, Sen. Reid writes:

“In light of recent events, I have decided to postpone Tuesday’s vote on the PROTECT I.P. Act.

There is no reason that the legitimate issues raised by many about this bill cannot be resolved. Counterfeiting and piracy cost the American economy billions of dollars and thousands of jobs each year, with the movie industry alone supporting over 2.2 million jobs. We must take action to stop these illegal practices. We live in a country where people rightfully expect to be fairly compensated for a day’s work, whether that person is a miner in the high desert of Nevada, an independent band in New York City, or a union worker on the back lots of a California movie studio.

I admire the work that Chairman Leahy has put into this bill. I encourage him to continue engaging with all stakeholders to forge a balance between protecting Americans’ intellectual property, and maintaining openness and innovation on the internet. We made good progress through the discussions we’ve held in recent days, and I am optimistic that we can reach a compromise in the coming weeks.”

One of the “legitimate issues” with PIPA that Reid mentions is a stipulation regarding blocking a website’s DNS record (domain name). In its current form, PIPA gives the U.S. Attorney General authority to order ISPs to block a foreign website’s DNS record if accused of piracy. But to do this, the ISPs would need to remove an extra layer of security (called DNSSEC) that’s used to prove that the site is actually what it claims to be. In other words, blocking DNS records at the ISP-level would make the internet less secure.

The stipulation has drawn plenty of criticism from web security experts. Even Sen. Patrick Leahy, who authored the PIPA legislation, has admitted that more study is needed regarding the DNS blocking stipulation.

Yet, PIPA’s DNS blocking stipulation is far from the only thing critics are taking issue with, as VentureBeat pointed out in our recent feature 10 things you need to know about SOPA and PIPA.

For more information about anti-piracy legislation, check out VentureBeat’s ongoing PIPA and SOPA coverage.

Pop star Will.i.am endorsing MegaUpload

A strange confluence of events brought the question of how to deal with online piracy to the forefront of the American consciousness this week. Protests against the anti-piracy bills, SOPA and PIPA, were the major news of the day on Wednesday, with blackouts of big sites across the web. The very next day, MegaUpload, one of the largest sites allegedly enabling piracy on the internet, was shut down as the result of a two-year FBI investigation.

By taking unilateral action against a rogue site who’s owners were scattered across the globe, the DOJ showed that it doesn’t need new legislation like SOPA or PIPA to handle piracy. Advocates of the legislation have always said that piracy was costing America billions in jobs and endangering jobs. Stronger laws are needed, they argue, even if they might pose risks of censorship, chill investment in tech, and damage the fundamental architecture of the internet.

But the DOJ was able to rely on ProIP, a law passed back in 2008, in order to shut down MegaUpload and arrest seven of its founders. It also worked with the government of New Zealand, which denied bail to the four people arrested there, including the site’s infamous founder, Kim Dotcom. Extradition to the U.S. for trail is underway.

Of course, the debate over how best to deal with piracy is far from over. In response to the indictment of MegaUpload, the hacktivist group Anonymous took down the websites of the DOJ, the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), and the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) yesterday. And while MegaUpload and its partner sites, like MegaVideo, might seem like clear-cut villains, there is still a strong contingent that sees the sudden arrests of the MegaUpload executives as overreaching.

The comment thread on tech forum Hacker News provides a sample of this strain of thought. “It’s better to allow these sites to continue to exist and demand that they comply with the requests than take them down with the FBI or whatever law enforcement agency. The precedent is far too dangerous. Today it’s Megaupload, tomorrow it will be YouTube,” wrote user Kermit the Hermit.

A more informed opinion from Mike Masnick at TechDirt gets to the same core issue. “Why do we need SOPA/PIPA again? It seems like the DOJ/ICE just undermined the key argument of the MPAA/RIAA/US CoC for why they need these laws. After all, Megaupload was one of the key examples used for why the law was needed.” He also honed in on the fact that the arrest will only heighten the already tense debate around copyright and piracy. “Wow is the timing dumb on the government’s part. Not only does it undermine the argument for PIPA/SOPA, but it raises significant questions about whether or not the feds already have too much censorship power.”

So just as you and all your hipster Internet buddies may be moving on to the next thing, mistakingly thinking that SOPA is dead and buried simply because President Obama said he would not support it in its current state, there’s countless more people only now awakening to the threat. And they’re all wondering, “What the hell is SOPA?” They may also be wondering, “Do you pronounce the other one ‘pippa’, or “pipa’?” but let’s just stay focused on one thing at a time.

Since there’s already an encyclopedic abyss of SOPA-related rants, news, interviews, and video games out there, I thought I’d wrap the general idea all up into a cute little infographic, with the help of designer Lorena Guerra.

Note: This may or may not reveal my slightly biased, personal stance on SOPA, and is not necessarily that of VentureBeat’s as a whole.