At the end of the 20th century analogue technology in the form of cassette tapes, video cassette recorders, and the Xerox machine created new opportunities for people to behave in ways that astonished the media business. It turned out we’re don’t only consume, but we also like to produce and we like to share. We would record our favourite radio shows, music, TV shows, copy written media, and share with our friends. These copies where mostly low quality and for non-profit.

This subversive behaviour by everyday people freaked the media businesses out. Jack Valenti who was the head lobbyist for the Motion Picture Association of America between the 5th of September 1921 and the 26th of April 2007 likened the ferocious video cassette recorder to Jack the Ripper and poor helpless Hollywood to a woman at home alone.

ROUND ONE- The Audio Home Recording Act of 1992 and Fair Use

The media industries demanded that US Congress do something, so in the 1992 Congress passed the law called The Audio Home Recording Act of 1992. What the The Audio Home Recording Act of 1992 said was, if people are taping stuff off the radio and then making mixtapes for their friends, that is not a crime. That’s okay. Taping and remixing and sharing with your friends is okay. If you make lots and lots of high quality copies and you sell them that is not okay. But this taping business, fine, let it go. Thus came in the concept of Fair Use that would influence international trade mark law.

But the Audio Home Recording Act of 1992 made the media businesses irate, they must have fumed over all the wasted donations to Congress as they had wanted the US Congress to outlaw copying outright.

ROUND TWO – DMCA

After the Audio Home Recording Act of 1992 was passed, the media businesses gave up on the idea of legal versus illegal distinctions for copying. it was clear to them that if Congress was acting in their framework, they might actually increase the rights of citizens to take part in our own media environment, so they formulated a new plan.

The new plan appeared in its first full form in 1998, it was called the Digital Millennium Copyright Act or DMCA for short. It was a complicated legislation, but the main thrust of the DMCA was that it was legal to sell the public uncopyable digital material.

But it is impossible to make digital information uncopyable. There is no such thing as uncopyable digital material. Professor of Princeton Ed Felton a prominent computer scientist and outspoken opponent of the DMCA said, “It would be like handing out water that wasn’t wet.” Bits are copyable. That’s what computers do. That is a side effect of their ordinary operation.

So as it is impossible to make uncopyable digital material, how does DMCA work? In order to fake the ability to sell uncopyable bits, the DMCA made it legal to force you to use systems that broke the copying function of your devices. Every DVD player, game player, television and computer you brought home, no matter what you thought you were getting when you bought it could be broken by the content industries, if they wanted to set that as a condition of selling you the content.

They made it illegal for you to try to reset the copyability of that content, or to enable the capabilities as general purpose computing devices

They coerced big operating system companies like Microsoft, Apple, etc. into building DMCA into their products.  They basically said to Microsoft, Apple, other companies and hardware manufactures that If you don’t bake DMCA into your products then we won’t let you play our media in your product, that will kill your sales, but hey feel free to ignore us at your peril.

Sub Note: Freedom aside DMCA adds an extra layer and points of instability in our operating systems and the applications that run in them. It is also possible for companies to use DMCA in legally questionable ways such as when in 2005 Sony BMG CD copy protection scandal started when security researcher Mark Russinovich revealed on 31st of October 2005 that Sony’s Extended Copy Protection copy protection software on the CD “Get Right with the Man” by Van Zant contained hidden files that could damage the operating system, install spyware and make the user’s computer vulnerable to attack when the CD was played on a Microsoft Windows based PC. Sony then released a software patch to remove XCP.

On the 15th of November 2005 Ed Felten and Alex Halderman Assistant professor of electrical engineering and computer science at the University of Michigan showed that Sony’s method for removing XCP copy protection software from the computer makes it more vulnerable to attack, as it essentially installed a rootkit, in the form of an Active X control used by the uninstaller, and left it on the user’s machine in a condition that allow any web page visited by the user to execute arbitrary code.

The consequences of the flaw are severe, it allows any Web page you visit to download, install, and run any code it likes on your computer. Any Web page can seize control of your computer; then it can do anything it likes. That’s about as serious as a security flaw can get.

The birth of DMCA marks the time and space that the media industries gave up on the legal system of distinguishing between legal and illegal copying and simply tried to prevent copying through technical means.

DMCA had and is continuing to have a lot of complicated effects but its main highpoint was in its early life. The main reason it hasn’t worked out as well as they wanted is the Internet. The Internet turned out to be far more popular and far more powerful than anyone imagined.

The mixtape, the fanzine, that was nothing compared to what Internet brought the masses. We are in a world or at least in the industrialised and computerised active part of it where people share things with friends and even strangers online across the world.

We share written things, we share images, we share audio, and we share video. Some of the stuff we share is stuff we’ve made. Some of the stuff we share is stuff we’ve found. Some of the stuff we share is stuff we’ve made out of what we’ve found, and we find that we do not allways need media companies, all of this horrifies those industries.

ROUND THREE – SOPA AND PIPA

SOPA and PIPA as legislation were drafted largely by media companies that were founded in the 20th century.

The DMCA was a surgical strike in where they wanted to go down into your computer, but SOPA PIPA are Total Biological-Nuclear Warfare, they are saying, we want to go anywhere in the world and censor content.

SOPA stands for the Stop Online Piracy Act, and it’s from the Senate.

PIPA stands for PROTECTIP, which is short for Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property.

SOPA and PIPA want to raise the cost of copyright compliance to the point where people simply get out of the business of offering it as a capability to amateurs.

But just how are SOPA and PIPA supposed to work? They are supposed to identify sites that are substantially infringing on copyright. Quite what “substantially infringing on copyright” is and how those sites are identified is never fully specified in the bills. But the result for an identified site would be to have it removed from the domain name system.

The domain name system or DNS is the thing that turns human-readable names, like Bing.com, into the form of addresses that a computer or other IP dependant machine can use to communicate i.e. 65.55.175.254.

Don’t take my word for it, go to your computer, and open up your web browser of choice. Inn the address bar enter 65.55.175.254 or you can make it a clickable link and press enter. As if by magic your web browser will open http://www.bing.com/.

Sub Note: The US government is working on tools that will allow people living in suppressive and censorship rich countries like China to bypass the Internet Walls that those countries have created around themselves.

So as we can see the problem with this model of censorship and of identifying a site and then trying to remove it from the domain name system is that it won’t work. But those paying for the bill such as the MPAA give enough money to the US Congress to blind them from small details like that.

The biggest producers of content on the Internet are not Google or Yahoo, the biggest producers are “We The People”. So it will be all of us who will be policed. In the end the real threat to the enactment of PIPA and SOPA is our ability to share things with one another.

So what PIPA and SOPA risked doing was taking a centuries old legal concept, of “innocent until proven guilty”, and reversing it, thus it becomes “guilty until proven innocent”. You can’t share until you show us that you’re not sharing something we don’t like. The burden of proof for legal versus illegal falls affirmatively on us and on the services that might be offering us any new capabilities. And if it costs even a 0.5% fraction of any world currency to police a user, then that would crush a service with a hundred million users.

The threat is the inversion of the burden of proof, where we are all treated like thieves at every moment we’re given the freedom to create, to produce or to share. Then the people who provide those capabilities to us such as YouTube, Twitter, TED, Facebook, MySpace and countless others are put in the business of police us.

Thanks to worldwide massive support of individuals companies with vested interest is ending SOPA and PIPA those two bills have been put to sleep, but they have not been defeated.

Even in partial defeat the media companies are belligerent, and had plotted backup plans. After the Two bills were put into a deep seep the former US Senator and not head mouth peace for the MPAA Chris Dodd said “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. 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.”

As open admissions of bribery go they don’t get much more open than that. You can find the petition here “Investigate Chris Dodd and the MPAA for bribery after he publicly admitted to bribing politicians to pass legislation”.  But after getting 31,034 signatures the US government is simply said “However, consistent with the We the People Terms of Participation and our responses to similar petitions in the past, the White House declines to comment on this petition because it requests a specific law enforcement action.”

ROUND FOUR – TO INFINITY AND BEYOND

So you have read the papers, watched the TV news, seen the online blogs and are feeling happy that SOPA and PIPA are dead. BUT STOP … they are dormant and not dead, the MPAA could tip their check book any time and bring them back.

But in the meantime there is another danger that goes by the name of ACTA.

If you are one of those who fought against SOPA and PIPA then you had the support of large names like Google, and Wikipedia, this time round such support is missing, in dead Google is supporting ACTA.

WHAT IS ACTA?

ACTA stands for the “Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement”, it was announced in late 2007.

The US, EU, Switzerland, and Japan said they would negotiate a new intellectual property enforcement agreement to counter the illegal counterfeit goods trade across borders. The US signed it last October 2011, along with other major players such as Canada, South Korea, Japan, and Australia.

The European member states still have to wait for the European Parliament to agree and ratify.

WHAT DOES ACTA COVER?

ACTA’s name uses the word “counterfeiting” in its title; it focuses on the transfer of online copyrighted material. It will be easier for law enforcement and ISPs and other intermediaries to monitor consumers, and impose new criminal sanctions on those who flout copyright and patent laws. Yes I said monitor you consumers because we know you are all thieves, without us having to prove it.

WHO IS SIGNING UP TO ACTA SO FAR?

Australia
Canada
Japan
Jordan
Mexico
Morocco
New Zealand
Singapore
South Korean
Switzerland
United Arab Emirates
United States

Twenty European Union member states signed up to the agreement, including the UK and Poland (recently experienced widespread protests against ACTA), but it still had to be ratified in Europe.

IS ACTA A LAW?

ACTA is a “TRADE AGREEMENT”, that means that it is neither a law nor a treaty. The trade agreement allows countries to work in alignment on certain matters. It is similar to SOPA and PIPA in that it will battle copyright infringement, but this trade agreement to patents, counterfeit goods and intellectual property rights.

ACTA supporters say that it will not change US law because that would be unconstitutional. That may sound less threatening but as it is a “sole executive agreement”, it allows the US President to sign it without from the US Senate. That means that no scrutiny of the trade agreement is needed.

If ACTA were to become a binding part of international law, it will create a precedent for future treaties that avoid basic principles of transparency and democratic accountability.

If ACTA become enforceable then it would be another mechanism for Western governments to force poorer countries to adopt bad copyright policies. For example, the treaty requires signatories to adopt anti circumvention rules similar to those in the American DMCA, and a regime of statutory damages like the one that produced a $1.5 million judgment against Jammie Thomas-Rasset for infringing 24 songs. Once ACTA is adopted by wealthy countries, the US government is likely to make its adoption a factor in its Special 301 report, which lists countries regarded as having insufficiently strong copyright laws. Thanks to this kind of arm twisting and groin bashing copyright treaties that are adopted in the US and Europe are eventually foisted on the rest of the world.

ACTA would continue the one way ratchet towards ever stronger copyright protections. ACTA establish a new, higher minimum of copyright protections and enforcement that countries must provide, but it doesn’t need countries to preserve mechanisms like fair use and intermediary immunity that protect intellectual freedom.

If the US Congress ever decides that IP rights have swung too far in one direction, then international agreements like ACTA will bind the hands of legislators unless the US is willing to withdraw from them first.

WHO WILL ENFORCE ACTA?

There will be a “ACTA Committee” created to make amendments to the agreement. The committee will not be accountable to anybody. It is outside the public and judicial process, and not accountable to a nation or an international body. The committee won’t even be accountable to those countries governed by the agreement, including the U.S. government and the European Commission.

WHY SUCH AN UPHEAVAL?

ACTA’s provisions would have been as bad as SOPA and PIPA, but many intrusive elements of ACTA have since been removed, thanks to the European legislators. However the rest of the provisions still pose a significant impact on end Web users and ordinary consumers.

The definitions within ACTA have a broad scope that could be used to target against just about anything. The EDR (European Digital Rights)  said that “ACTA provides an extremely low threshold for imposing criminal sanctions.” This means that should a person, a company, or even a government accidentally or unintentionally infringe copyright, this could be considered a criminal act. Further into this, what used to be a civil offence can now be deemed a criminal offence. You can see the EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation) take on this in their summery “IN THE MATTER OF THE ANTI-COUNTERFEITING TRADE AGREEMENT“.

IS ACTA ACTUALLY SHROUDED IN SECRECY?

The creation of ACTA has been known for some time, but the negotiations themselves were behind closed doors. A leaked US diplomatic cable said that the negotiations had been “set at a higher level than is customary for non-security agreements”.

COULD ISPS BE LIABLE FOR THEIR CUSTOMERS’ ILLEGAL ACTIVITY?

ACTA proposed that ISPs would be partly if not wholly responsible for what their customers such as illegal file sharing. These measures have since been removed. Reduced to a mere footnote in the text, countries can now do as much or as little as they like to limit ISP liability.

WILL ISPS BE FORCED TO SNOOP ON ITS USERS?

ACTA could give governments new powers to deal with “Internet distribution and information technology”.

In the first drafts ISPs could have been forced into blocking sites that infringe copyright. They may have been forced into installing “mandatory network-level filtering” at ISP-level, these measures have since been removed from ACTA.

The European Union adopted an Internet freedom provision, stating that any measures taken by EU member states that affect citizen’s access to the Internet “must respect the fundamental rights and freedoms of citizens”. That taken into account, it did say that European citizens are entitled to a “fair and impartial procedure” before any Web-restricting measures can be imposed.

COULD A ‘THREE STRIKES’ RULE BECOME A UNIVERSAL SANCTION?

US negotiators required ISPs to adopt a three strikes rule on serial copyright infringers. France already has a three strikes rule. This rule is backed by the MPAA and the RIAA.   But the European Parliament voted against the Three Strike rule, this means that signing European member states will not be able to.

The Three Strike rule could still apply to the US (home land of freedom?).  

WILL DMCA TAKEDOWN NOTICES NOW GO WORLDWIDE?

The US has a notice and takedown system under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).

If you have ever seen a ‘missing’ search result in Google, then you have seen a takedown in action.

It allows rights holders to send a notification to a party infringing copyright that they are doing so, and to take it down or face court.

But the US has since climbed down from its attempts to essentially push its DMCA system on the rest of the world. But they are likely to try again.

IS THIS TRUE THAT ACTA MAKES GETTING ACCESS TO MEDICINES MORE DIFFICULT?

One of the worries is the vague language used by the text in ACTA. Generic drugs are at risk of being considered illegal, and could be confiscated at borders, making the global fight against disease far more difficult.  Corporations would be able to prevent generic, non-branded medicines and drugs from reaching those who need them.

It is true that counterfeit drugs can be dangerous, and can cause more harm than good. Such ‘grey market’ drugs can infringe patents belonging to pharmaceutical giants, but are far cheaper for both poorer nations and for NGO’s to buy from charitable fundraising.

There is however a line between dangerous counterfeit drugs and generic drugs.

Oxfam said in a statement in 2010: “A trade agenda that limits the legitimate movement of cheap generic medicines will hit the poorest people in developing countries disproportionately hard. The interests of big drug companies can not be put ahead of the needs of two billion people around the world who do not have access to essential medicines.”

IS IT POSSIBLE FOR ACTA NOT TO BE PASSED IN EUROPE?

It is possible that ACTA will fail to pass, this is because 20 of the countries that are willing to sign ACTA are member states of the European Union. ACTA will effectively have to pass along the desk of the European Parliament, and this is expected in June 2012.

It is likely that many will refuse to sign ACTA, leaving the US and others outside the European Union in the cold. If ACATA is not passed in Europe then it would strike a heavy blow to the US, which is spearheading ACTA.

HOW WILL HOME FILE-SHARERS BE AFFECTED?

There will be little difference, if you are caught illegally file sharing, you may face trouble in your respective country, as you would do anyway.

Because the agreement also covers piracy, individual file sharers of any sort, including those who use peer to peer networks and file sharing sites like RapidShare would have been in the crosshairs. It would have meant that anyone found downloading music or movies or other material could face fines, seizure of equipment, and even custodial sentences.

However as the negotiation process went on, these measures were eventually eliminated from the final text.

HOW DOES ACTA DEAL WITH STATUTORY DAMAGES?

‘Statutory damages’ allow rights holders to receive compensation per work rather than compensation for losses or damages. In the US the basic level of damages is between $750 and $30,000 per work. This means that one college student can be fined $675,000 for downloading only 30 songs. Ultimately, it can result in extremely disproportionate fines for ordinary web users.   Even after being  watered down, ACTA still pushes for statutory damages, this mean that ACTA will export the US system of damages to jurisdictions that do not have statutory damages.

WILL NON-SIGNING COUNTRIES BE UNAFFECTED?

No it won’t, however just as the US can lobby the Spanish government to make SOPA like laws by threatening to include the country on a trade sanctions list, it can also lobby other countries with smaller economies with similar sanctions.

The US Trade Representative draws up an annual intellectual property “naughty list”, as described by Public Knowledge, which allows the U.S. to threaten emerging nations with trade sanctions. The U.S. can threaten, and it has done so before to enact such sanctions, forcing smaller economies in changing their laws to align with that of the United States.

How will borders and airport security be affected?  Imagine an airport experience where your mobile phone or laptop was plugged in and its contents downloaded or analysed for infringing material. The US has for some time conducted such searches in the fight against terrorism.

ACTA allows such measures, but on a wider scale to include infringing material. The EU was critical of this, saying [PDF]: “EU customs, frequently confronted with traffics of drugs, weapons or people, do neither have the time nor the legal basis to look for a couple of pirated songs on an iPod music player or laptop computer, and there is no intention to change this.”

But ACTA does allow exceptions to this, such as personal baggage. ACTA permits this as an exception, rather than requiring one, making this an opt out policy. The chances are the EU would opt out, but other nations may not.

COULD ISPS BE FORCED TO GIVE RIGHTS-HOLDERS DETAILS OF INTERNET SUBSCRIBERS?

ACTA will give governments a “legal support mechanism” should they themselves decide to allow rights holders to seek subscriber data from ISPs. It was noted that the agreement’s text has replaced the word “shall” with “may”, but it does give governments an excuse to do so.

IS ACTA ALL DOOM AND GLOOM?

Yes, no, maybe, the language used in ACTA is often vague, difficult to comprehend, and often illegible without 20 years of internship under a world class lawyer, but there is some hope. ACTA wants to protect legitimate e-commerce and freedom of speech. It notes it, saying: “These procedures shall be implemented in a manner that avoids the creation of barriers to legitimate activity, including electronic commerce, and, consistent with that Party’s law, preserves fundamental principles such as freedom of expression, fair process, and privacy.”

However all in all it needs to be stopped.  

IF SOPA & PIPA WAS A ‘DISTRACTION’ FOR ACTA, WHAT IS ACTA THOUGHT TO BE COVERING?

If you thought SOPA and PIPA were bad, then ACTA is your worst nightmare, but this nightmare goes on and on. Coming up behind ACTA is TPP, and TPP is even worse. If SOPA and PIPA are likened to Total Biological-Nuclear Warfare, then TPP is a STAR KILLER WAR HEAD that will take out the solar system of our rites.

TPP stands for the “Trans-Pacific Partnership”. The levels of secrecy are even more stringent than that of ACTA, according to TechDirt, with some negotiating documents being kept secret for up to four years after ratification.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) said that TPP will “rewrite the global rules on [intellectual property] enforcement”, but “omits the flexibilities and exceptions that protect Internet users and technology innovators.”

WHEN IS ACTA EXPECTED TO COME INTO FORCE?

Prof. Michael Geist, an expert on Internet privacy issues, notes that: “The majority of ACTA countries have signed the agreement, but it will only take effect once five countries have formally implemented and ratified it. That is not expected until at least May 2013, opening the door to stopping the agreement from taking effect.”.

The European Parliament also has a heavy sway in whether ACTA goes through. It must through the European Parliament before member states’ can ratify it.

IS IT TO LATE TO STOP ACTA?

In short, NO it is not to late, but we have to be vigilant, even if we defeat ACTA as TPP and other nightmares are coming this way.

WHAT CAN I DO?

SIGN THESE ANTI ACTA PETITIONS!

http://www.avaaz.org/en/eu_save_the_internet_spread/

https://www.accessnow.org/page/s/just-say-no-to-acta

https://submissions.epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/20685

http://www.petitiononline.com/petitions/stopacta/signatures

http://stopacta.org/

http://action.openrightsgroup.org/ea-campaign/clientcampaign.do?ea.campaign.id=6538

IF YOU ARE IN THE UK, THEN CONTACT YOUR MP.

You can do this on line at WriteToThem.com

Or you can get their details from theyworkforyou.com

PROTEST: International day of action against ACTA on the 11th of February 2012

Join the international day of action against ACTA on the 11th of February 2012. I will be going to the London / UK one.

It will start at 14:00 at British Music House, 25-27 Berners St, London, Greater London, W1T 3LR .

Check this map for locations of all the protests, please feel free to join in. But note this is a !!!THIS IS A PEACEFUL PROTEST!!!, marshals and stuarts will be along with the march to point out trouble makers to the police.

Check the ACCESNOW press blog for links and other locations, note their map is the same as the one above, but centred on europe.

PROTEST: Support Operation Black ‘March’

On Thursday the 1st of March 2012 to Saturday the 31st of March 2012 show your protest with your banking power. Take a stand against music, film and media companies’ lobbyists. The only way is to hit them where it truly hurts. Their profit margins.

March 2012 is the end of the 1st quarter in economic reports worldwide.

Do not buy a single record.
Do not download a single song, legally or illegally.
Do not go to see a single film in cinemas, or download a copy.
Do not buy a DVD in the stores.
Do not buy a video game.
Do not buy a single book or Magazine.

Wait the 4 weeks to buy them in April, see the film later, etc.

Holding out for just 4 weeks, maximum, will leave a gaping hole in media and entertainment companies’ profits for the 1st quarter, an economic hit which will in turn be observed by governments worldwide as stocks and shares will blip from a large enough loss of incomes. This action can give a statement of intent.

SOME ONLINE GROUPS

STOP ACTA – LONDON PROTEST 11 FEB 2012
URL: http://www.facebook.com/groups/176043192500563/#!/events/170835693019760/?notif_t=event_photo_change

Fight For The Future
Fight for the Future is a non-profit helping to organize the historic strike against the web censorship bills SOPA and PIPA on our site sopastrike.com – go there for a list of websites that are striking and more information.
Press: Need quotes or info? Help finding an expert for on-air interview? Contact us.
Email: press@fightforthefuture.org
Email: team@fightforthefuture.org
Phone: (508) 474-5248
URL: http://killacta.org/

Who Votes For Acta
FACEBOOK: whovotesforacta.eu
TWITTER: @WhoVotesforActa
URL: http://www.whovotesforacta.eu/

STOP ACTA
TWITTER: @OpACTA
This group is dedicated to informing people about ACTA. Here you will find information, updates, and most importantly – PROTEST EVENTS!
URL: http://www.facebook.com/groups/176043192500563/

StopACTANow
TITTER: @StopActaNow
TWITTER FEED: #STOP #ACTA
URL: http://www.stopacta.info/

La Quadrature du Net
TWITTER: @laquadrature
URL: http://www.laquadrature.net/ACTA

Stopp ACTA
http://www.stopp-acta.info/english/home/home.html

USEFUL LINKS

Interactive Timeline about ACTA [LINK]

Related articles

• SOPA, ACTA and WIPO: where is the copyfight headed? (boingboing.net)
• Occupy this: 5 Internet regulations we need to destroy (digitaltrends.com)
• SOPA/PIPA, ACTA, TTP: Where does it end? (piedtype.com)
• Even Though SOPA / PIPA Are Hot Topics, Remember DMCA Already Has Significant Problems (censorshipinamerica.com)
• Final Draft Of ACTA Watered Down, TPP Still Dangerous On IP Rules (forbes.com)
• Copyright Update: C-11 and ACTA (laurelrusswurm.wordpress.com)
• 10 Biggest Threats to Internet Freedom Now That SOPA/PIPA is Dead (businesspundit.com)
• Thought SOPA Was Bad? 10 Reasons to Oppose ACTA (readwriteweb.com)
• What Is ACTA And Why Is It A Problem?

Image by Ann Douglas via Flickr

If you think that Chris Dodd and the MPPA should be investigated for bribery after he either publicly admitted to bribing politicians to pass legislation or blatantly threatened them, then you should sign the Petition to the Obama administration to: Investigate Chris Dodd and the MPAA for bribery after he publicly admitted to bribing politicians to pass legislation.

Recently on FOX News former Senator Chris Dodd said (as quoted on news site TechDirt), “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. 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,”

This is an open admission of bribery and a threat designed to provoke a specific policy goal.

This is a brazen flouting of the “above the law” status people of Dodd’s position and wealth enjoy.

We demand justice.

Investigate this blatant bribery and indict every person, especially government officials and lawmakers, who is involved.

To sigh the Petition click here [PETITION TO INVESTIGATE CHRIS DODD AND THE MPAA FOR BRIBERY]

Related articles

• Bringing the corruption of our government to the light – Investigate Chris Dodd (jhnconnect.com)
• Petition: investigate Chris Dodd for fraud (boingboing.net)
• Investigate Dodd and the MPAA for bribery after public threats to congress (wwws.whitehouse.gov)
• While House Petitioned to Investigate MPAA Bribery (torrentfreak.com)
• Petition asks White House to probe MPAA’s Chris Dodd (thehimalayantimes.com)
• Chris Dodd and the MPAA (tdhurst.com)
• White House Petitioned to Investigate MPAA Bribery (techfleece.com)
• So, there’s this petition targeting MPAA head Chris Dodd…. (shortformblog.tumblr.com)
• SOPA, PIPA, OPEN, the MPPA, Deep Pockets, Lobbyist Revolving Door of Corruption and False Faith (joelhalluk.wordpress.com)

Image by ~C4Chaos via Flickr

Political leaders in the US have cancelled plans to vote on the SOPA and PIPA legislation currently before Congress, saying more time is needed to examine the issue.

OK so that’s a VICTORY.. no .. as I said before this is time for next act.

Senator Harry Reid from Nevada how shepherded PIPA through the Senate, announced that he would postpone a vote on the bill scheduled for next week.  He praised the proposed legislation and said he looked forward to eventually getting it to a vote.

Senator Harry Reid said ..

“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.”

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Lamar Smith then said that the SOPA legislation in the House of Representatives would be put on hold, but went on to say the government would have to pass some kind of legislation to deal with foreign thieves.

Yes all you internet users out there when she said “foreign thieves” what she really means is “Up Yours”.

The MPPA then stated its resolved to push this further by a statement from the MPAA CEO Chris Dodd.

Before we hear what Chris Dodd said, I think its important to have some back story on Chris Dodd. If you are not from the US then you probably have no idear who he is.

Some time back before Chris Dodd broke his promise about NEVER BECOMING A LOBBYIST I thought he was a half decent politician; well that’s just dumb of me, but then is pretty good at telling interesting truths.

Chris Dodd was a U.S. Democratic presidential hopeful who retired from the Senate.

Back in February 2011 Chris Dodd repeatedly and categorically insisting that he would not work as a lobbyist when he retired from the senate.

But Chris Dodd BROKE his Promise Not To Become A Lobbyist!

Just weeks after leaving the senate Chris Dodd  broke his promise not to become  a lobbyist, when he took over from the then retiring MPPA CEO Dan Glickman (him self a former Agriculture Secretary) and became the new MPPA CEO.

Ohhh .. so being a SEO and a lobbyist are so different?

If Chris Dodd had become President of the US, he would have had an annual salary of $400,000 , along with a $50,000 annual expense account, a $100,000 non-taxable travel account and trifling $19,000 for entertainment ( I would get through that in a weekend).

But as the MPAA CEO Chris Dodd nets a rather cool $1.2 million a year, not to mention a slush fund that can buy him congressmen and senators from the left and right, he has more power on the floor than the current president has. If you don’t believe me, then how did SOPA get so close?

OK, back story done, so back to point, the MPAA CEO and former “TRUSTED” US senator Chris Dodd wrote.

“As a consequence of failing to act, there will continue to be a safe haven for foreign thieves; American jobs will continue to be lost; and consumers will continue to be exposed to fraudulent and dangerous products peddled by foreign criminals.”

So we the people of the world have a partial victory. But legislation is only on hold, so there are plenty of opportunities for the media industry to take another shot at it once all the fuss has died down. They may even change the names of the bills, but they will be back.

There has been too much money spent on campaign contributions to give up now, and you can bet the MPPA’s bottom dollar that millions more are to come. But that’s probably going to wait until the US presidential election has distracted everyone.

But you don’t have to wait till after the elections, these guys are full of ideas. They also have the bipartisan Online Protection and Enforcement of Digital Trade (OPEN Act).

If OPEN gets past the goal then they can block funds going to foreign piracy websites. This would not involve doomed to fail attempts at block them by disrupting the DNS infrastructure. Instead the task would be assigned to intellectual property experts at the US International Trade Commission (ITC).

Congressman Darrell Issa who is the OPEN Act co-sponsor and SOPA critic, said ..

“Over the last two months, the intense popular effort to stop SOPA and PIPA has defeated an effort that once looked unstoppable but lacked a fundamental understanding of how Internet technologies work,” Issa said. “Postponing the Senate vote on PIPA removes the imminent threat to the Internet, but it’s not over yet.”

The OPEN Act is far from perfect, and there is nothing about fair use in it for example. Even so it has supporters such as Google and Facebook, so has a shot at passing.

But the MPPA and others will not give up so easily and with the US election schedule getting into gear, politicians will be hungry for campaign funds. The MPPA will be one of the biggest givers, but what will they want for their millions?

Related articles

• The New York Times’ interview with Chris Dodd features the former Senator and current MPAA head comparing the protests against SOPA to the Arab Spring. Seriously. (shortformblog.tumblr.com)
• Dox of MPAA CEO Chris Dodd, Powerful Lobbyist for SOPA/PIPA (ilegionnet.wordpress.com)
• SOPA/PIPA Backers Still Don’t Get It (eliainsider.com)
• SOPA and PIPA: Dead? Well, maybe… (feldmanfile.blogspot.com)
• MPAA CEO Chris Dodd: Blackouts Turn Users Into “Corporate Pawns” (techcrunch.com)
• Hollywood had Chris Dodd and a press release, Silicon Valley had Facebook (nevillehobson.com)
• SOPA and PIPA both shelved for now. (arstechnica.com)
• The real winners of the fight between Internet and Old media are the politicians (restreaming.wordpress.com)
• SOPA Victory (nosyass.com)

They have called for legislators to pass the two gay marriage bills SB 6239 and HB 2516 recognizing marriage equality for same-sex couples currently circulating through their chambers.

Microsoft’s general counsel Brad Smith writes:

At Microsoft, we pride ourselves on our products and services, our brand, and our global reach. But unquestionably, our employees are our greatest asset.

…

As other states recognize marriage equality, Washington’s employers are at a disadvantage if we cannot offer a similar, inclusive environment to our talented employees, our top recruits and their families. Employers in the technology sector face an unprecedented national and global competition for top talent. Despite progress made in recent years with domestic partnership rights, same-sex couples in Washington still hold a different status from their neighbors. Marriage equality in Washington would put employers here on an equal footing with employers in the six other states that already recognize the committed relationships of same-sex couples – Connecticut, Iowa, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York and Vermont. This in turn will help us continue to compete for talent.

You can see the full Microsoft here.

Add Microsoft’s explanation to the list of arguments for marriage equality: Discrimination is bad for tech businesses.

This is true regardless which group of people discrimination targets.Companies can’t hire the best people, and the best people can’t do their best work. And in the end, everybody loses.

Related articles

• An economic development thought for Idaho (ridenbaugh.com)
• McAuliffe declares support of gay marriage bill (heraldnet.com)

Image by ~C4Chaos via Flickr

I have not been blogging for a while, as work and projects have kept me occupied.

But SOPA and PIPA have been of great concern, and greater concern yet was how little people, industry and those whose job it is to pass laws i.e. politician know about it.

In the end the world pretty much rallied, and a very bad law was exposed for what it is.

OK so ding-dong the witch is dead and Dorothy can go home to Kansas  … not quite!

The news is now rife with reports about how SOPA is dead. But SOPA is not dead, it is just waiting for a slithering backer to push another million dollars into the grasping hands of politicians and then a new bill by any other name will come to life.

In the meantime PIPA still needs to die.

While we hold our breath on this one, I came across the following information on Open Congress.

Standing for the BLACK HATS are organizations supporting SOPA (H.R.3261) & thus opposed to free speech and a free internet.

If this bill had passed it would have granted levels of censorship that china would be proud of. Contact these organizations and bring them to account about why thy supported the bill, and will they support the next incarnation on SOPA and what are they doing about PIPA.

Merck
Mercury Nashville
Minor League Baseball
Motion Picture Association of America
MPA – The Association of Magazine Media
National Association of Broadcasters
National Association of Fusion Center Directors
National Association of Manufacturers
National Association of Prosecutor Coordinators
National Association of State Chief Information Officers
National Association of Theatre Owners
National Basketball Association
National Cable & Telecommunications Association
National Center for Victims of Crime
National Confectioners Association
National Criminal Justice Association
National District Attorneys Association
National Domestic Preparedness Coalition
National Electrical Manufacturers Association
National Football League
National Governors Association
National Music Publishers’ Association
National Narcotics Officer’s Associations’ Coalition
National Retail Federation
National Sheriff’s Association
National Songwriters Association
National Troopers Coalition
NBC Universal
Netflix
News Corporation
Nike, Inc.
Outdoor Industry Association
Pearson Education
Penguin Group
Perseus Books Group
Pfizer
Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America
Philip Morris International
Provident Music Group
Publishers Worldwide, Inc.
Random House
Recording Industry Association of America
Republic Nashville
Retail Industry Leaders Association
Scholastic, Inc.
Screen Actors Guild
Showdog Universal
Small Business and Entrepreneurship Council
Society of Plastics Industry
Software & Information Industry Association
Specialty Equipment Market Association
Sporting Goods Manufacturer’s Association
State International Development Organizations
Taylor Made Golf Company, Inc.
Tiffany & Company
Timberland Company
Time Warner
True Religion Brand Jeans
U. S. Chamber of Commerce
Ultimate Fighting Championship
UMG Publishing Group
Underwriters Laboratories Inc.
United States Conference of Mayors
United States Tennis Association
Universal Music Group Inc.
Viacom
Viacom
Visa
W.W. Norton Company
Walmart
Warner Music Group
Warner Music Nashville
Wolers Kluwer Health
Word Entertainment
Xerox Corporation

Standing for the WHITE HATS are organizations opposing SOPA (H.R.3261) & thus helping to support free speech and a free internet.

Send them all a big thank you and your support, make sure they know you will be watching out for the next bill, and watching what they do.

4chan
A Softer World
American Civil Liberties Union
American Library Association
American Society of News Editors
AOL
Arianna Huffington, co-founder of The Huffington Post
Association of College and Research Libraries
Association of Research Libraries
Benetech
Biz Stone, co-founder of Obvious and Twitter
Bloomberg
Boing Boing
Bread Without Bullets
Brewster Kahle, founder of the Internet Archive and co-founder of Alexa Internet
Brookings Institute
Business Software Alliance
Caterina Fake, co-founder of Flickr and Hunch
Center for Democracy & Technology
Center for Media Justice
Center for Rural Strategies
Center for Technology & Democracy
Chad Hurley, co-founder of YouTube
City News
Colossal Mind
Competitive Enterprise Institute
Computer & Communications Industry Association
ComputerHope
Consumer Electronics Association
Consumer Federation of America
Consumers Union
Craig Newmark, founder of craigslist
Creative Commons
Creators’ Freedom Project
Crypto Cat
Daily Kos
DatelineZero
David Filo, co-founder of Yahoo!
Demand Progress
Destructoid
DigiBase
Disqus
dotSUB
eBay
EDUCAUSE
Electronic Frontier Foundation
Elephant Talk Wiki
Elon Musk, co-founder of PayPal
Engine Advocacy
Entertainment Consumers Assocation
Errata Security
Etsy
Evan Williams, co-founder of Blogger and Twitter
Expedia
Facebook
Focus on the Facts
FreakOutNation
Free Software Foundation
Freedom House
Go Daddy
Gog.com
Google
Greenpeace International
Grooveshark
Heritage Foundation
Huffington Post
Human Rights First
Human Rights Watch
Hype Machine
ICanHasCheezburger
Imgur
Indenti.ca
Information Technology Industry Council
Internet Archive
Internews
Irregular Times
iSchool at Syracuse University
Jack Dorsey, co-founder of Twitter and Square
Jazz Sequence
Jerry Yang, co-founder of Yahoo!
Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia and the Wikimedia Foundation
Kaspersky
Kickstarter
Liberty Confidential
LinkedIn
Major League Gaming
Marc Andreessen, co-founder of Netscape and Andreessen Horowitz
MetaFilter
Microsoft
Minecraft
Miro
Monticello Capital
MoveOn
Mozilla
Namecheap
National Federation of American Students
NetCoalition
New America Foundation’s Open Technology Initiative
News2Map.com
nomacs Image Lounge
Open Congress
Open Internet Coalition
OpenDNS
openSUSE
O’Reilly Radar
PayPal
peeje
Petzel
PhantomTS
Pierre Omidyar, founder of eBay
Plague Studio
Progressive Change Campaign Committee
Public Knowledge
Quora
Rackspace
RageMaker
Raw Story
Red 5 Studios
Reddit
Reid Hoffman, co-founder of LinkedIn
Reporters Without Borders
Ron Bercume Design
Safex.tk
Scribd
Sergey Brin, co-founder of Google
SlashTHREE
Smirking Chimp
Spurs of the Moment
Stack Overflow
Strategy Tune
Tech Crunch
TechAmerica
Techdirt
TechFreedom
TechNet
The LeakyWiki
Tor Project
Torrentfreak
Tucows
Tumblr
Twitpic
Twitter
U.S. Public Interest Group
Union Square Ventures
United States Student Association
Universal Subtitles
USWGO
Vanilla Forums
Victor Rix
ViperZeroOne
webhostingbuzz.com
Wikimedia Foundation
Wikipedia
WJSimpson
WordPress
WPS Security Lock
Writers Guild of America, West
XDA Developers
Yahoo
Zynga

Related articles

• STOP PIPA (Senate 968) & SOPA (HR 3261) ! (urbanintell.com)
• Hosting Firms Add Voices to SOPA Protest (datacenterknowledge.com)
• Son Of SOPA: Senator Marco Rubio Dropping His Co-Sponsorship Of PIPA (tarpon.wordpress.com)
• SOPA Could Shackle Greatest Innovations (platopress.com)
• President Obama Stops SOPA Piracy Bill (dreblacksofresh.com)
• Sopa & Pipa (eclecticedibles.wordpress.com)

Image via CrunchBase

On 09/12/2011 security reseller Accuvant published report looking at Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Chrome, where Google Chrome comes out on top, and Mozilla Firefox at the bottom. Accuvant are fairly respected, but the report was funded by Google.

Just because Google paid for the report it does not make it corrupt, but it did leave me with a dirt feeling.

The Accuvant report can be found here, I ask you to give it a good read before you read the NSS labs report.

The Accuvant report states that “Readers should understand that, while Google funded the research for this paper, Accuvant LABS was given a clear directive to provide readers with an objective understanding of relative browser security. The views expressed throughout this document are those of Accuvant LABS, based on our independent data collection.”

The Accuvant reports conclusion was that “The URL blacklisting services offered by all three browsers will stop fewer attacks than will go undetected. Both Google Chrome and Microsoft Internet Explorer implement state-of-the-art antiexploitation technologies, but Mozilla Firefox lags behind without JIT hardening. While both Google Chrome and Microsoft Internet Explorer implement the same set of anti-exploitation technologies, Google Chrome’s plug-in security and sandboxing architectures are implemented in a more thorough and comprehensive manner. Therefore, we believe Google Chrome is the browser that is most secured against attack.”

I respect Accuvant but if Microsoft had paid for a report Google would be screaming about its findings. If the findings had been that Internet Explorer 9 was the most secure and Chrome the least, would Google have gracefully have allowed the findings to come to light?

Due to that report being published NSS Labs where approached by several enterprise clients, who asked for a review of the Google/Accuvant publication and supporting tools and data to give an independent opinion.

NSS analysts have also examined data from on-going NSS Labs browser research to give additional guidance.

The NSS Labs report can be found here, give it a good read, its shorter than the Accuvant report.

The final analysis from NSS labs was as follows.

“How vulnerable a modem web browser is to attack is certainly a high profile question. It is a well-documented phenomenon that new software contains more bugs (which may expose vulnerabilities) than software that has been around for a while. It is part of the software development lifecycle. Examining historical data on the number of vulnerabilities discovered during a period of time provides insight into the maturity of the software in question and is a good indicator of how many future vulnerabilities will be discovered.”

“The most frequently exploited vulnerabilities leading to system infection with malware are found in third party software such as Java software and the most popular exploit toolkits being used by criminal organizations (such as Black Hole) primarily target third party software (such as Java). This focus on third party applications is likely due to frequent and semi-automatic updates by browser vendors which shrinks the opportunity-time an attacker has to compromise a target, as well as the cross browser-platform nature of third party applications. In essence, if you think from an attacker’s standpoint, why design an exploit for Chrome 15 and a separate one Firefox 8 and a separate one for Internet Explorer 9 when they will have very short shelf life, when a single Java exploit will do the trick just fine? In addition, exploits that use interpreted languages such as Java are very difficult to defend against. Unless they have a pattern match for a known exploit, network and host intrusion prevention systems as well as anti-virus/endpoint protection products are unable to discern legitimate Java from malicious Java. So as an attacker, there is an added “stealth” benefit to exploiting third party software such as Java.”

“Google with holding important malware protection from its SafeBrowsing feed so that its own product has an advantage over Firefox and Safari, is an important precedent and contains echoes of accusations made against the company that it improperly provided preferential search results for its own products over third parties. While Google is entitled to improve its product, the way in which the company approached the break with Firefox should be noted.”

So let’s get this right, Google a company whose motto is “Don’t do evil” has dumbed down its SafeBrowing feed that it gives to Firefox and Safari. From a marketing point of view that’s an inteligent thing to do, it makes your browser look better. But from a white hat perspective that’s pretty EVIL with a capital EVIL, you putting you our there as pushing an open form of share security, and then you are making all the users on Firefox and Safari less safe.

Hmm I think you guys need to go read that motto again, because that sticks!

My browser of choice was and still is IE9.

What do you think?

Related articles

• What’s the Most Secure Web Browser? [Security] (lifehacker.com)
• Researchers accuse Google of plotting to undercut Firefox (infoworld.com)
• Researchers accuse Google of plotting to undercut Firefox (dccrowley.posterous.com)
• Is There a Google Conspiracy? (dailyfinance.com)

Image via Wikipedia

OK GAMERS .. BIG NEWS, Angry Birds comes to the PC.

Yes, that’s all, sorry I lied, but I least I did not code a joke like this, and then try to sell it as a game. I know where seem to be lots of people who are willing to go to see Angry Birds movie, and have angry birds soft ties, but hey, I am sorry, sorry for you that is. But it takes

The game (if it can be called that) needs 512 MB ram, 1 GHz CPU, and crappy open GL 1.3 plus an internet connection. So it should not stretch even OLD pc too much, All this you get for $4.95, but I think a firer price would be them paying you the same amount for wasting your hard drive space, and eating away your mind.

Let me know why you would pay for this shining … thing?

Image via CrunchBase

I have supported Blackberry Enterprise Servers in my work life; I have built three Blackberry Enterprise Servers, and I have a great deal of respect for blackberries and the benefits they give a company. But from a user’s perspective, they are looking old.

Some investors have called for RIM to sell its patents or even itself.  Microsoft was named as a potential suitor to buy RIM out, and I like it at some levels, but I am not convinced it would ever happen, but would not rule it out.

Why should Microsoft take over RIM?  Regardless of the anti-Microsoft anything league Microsoft have a solid product in Windows Phone 7, and a future Windows Phone 8 and beyond.

In November 2010 Dell moved 25,000 of their employees Dell’s own Venue Pro running Windows Phone 7 migrations like that hurt.

In the eyes of some execs RIM appears is getting relegating to the side lines.

One of RIMs partners are a company by the name of Evercore, they are an investment banking advisory firm. Evercore are calling for RIM to adopt the Windows Phone OS for Blackberry devices.

Evercore  said “We now believe that RIMM needs to adopt an existing ecosystem (Windows Phone) in order to remain a relevant player in the smart phone market”

But wait .. what is so wrong with that idea?   I think that a Blackberry device running Windows Phone 7.5 (Mango) or waiting for Windows Phone 8, with the built-in security of Blackberry would be great differentiator for RIM devices. You would have a smooth OS, plus rock hard security for your company’s messages, and you would still have things like Blackberry messenger built into it.

I don’t know how feasibility this is, but I think that it could be done. I think that if RIM announced that they had a deal with Microsoft to run devices with Windows Phone hardware specs and with Windows Phone 7.5 or hold out for Windows Phone 8, then their stock price would shoot up.

Network Managers all over the world wold breathe a sigh of relief that they had decent control and security over corporate messaging unlike iPhones. The deal would also do Microsoft a world of good in gaining them another reliable hardware partner.

I doubt it will happen but RIM with a Windows Phone OS and high-class Windows Phone body shell with Gorilla glass sounds cool to me.

Related articles

• RIM Needs Microsoft (unbrokennews.wordpress.com)

Image via Wikipedia

I just took a look at Facebook’s new Timeline. I am mostly ok with it. but I do have one gripe.

Your friends can be set so that only you can see them. For my money I like that, it means that if I accidentally ok someone as a friend, and they turn out to be someone looking to harvest my friends list for spam etc., then it does not matter and they cannot see my friends.

But when I set my friends to only me, then myself, plus those friends in common can see each other. I think on the whole it’s a minor risk, and an irritation, but I DO NOT LIKE IT. I think “only me”, should me only me!

If you don’t like the new timeline then you can remove it. You just need to remove permission for the Facebook Time Line. To do that just click on this link.

On balance I will keep it for now and see how I get on with it.

Let me know what you think of Timeline?

         Related articles

• Facebook’s Timeline is Here, Ready or Not (news.dice.com)
• Facebook Timeline now available to all users (onsoftware.en.softonic.com)
• Facebook Timeline: How to Enable It With One Click [PICS] (mashable.com)
• How ignorance can ruin a friendship (stirringthecauldronwithjudas.wordpress.com)
• Facebook Timeline Available Worldwide (buzzfeed.com)