SOPA/PIPA reinvented (OPEN, ACTA, etc.)

[kuronosan]

George Carlin would have had a field day with this.

[Cantih]

CANADA BGers

http://boingboing.net/2012/01/23/us-...ng-to-sne.html

With Bill C-11 back on the legislative agenda at the end of the month, Canada will be a prime target for SOPA style rules. In fact, a close review of the unpublished submissions to the Bill C-32 legislative committee reveals that several groups have laid the groundwork to add SOPA-like rules into Bill C-11, including blocking websites and expanding the "enabler provision"to target a wider range of websites.

Looks like you have your own fight coming up. (again)

[6souls]

Online activists have attacked Polish government websites in protest against plans to sign an international copyright treaty.

The websites of the prime minister, parliament and other government offices were all rendered unreachable or sluggish on Sunday.

Critics say the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (Acta) could lead to censorship.

The government said it would sign the treaty as planned on Thursday.

After the attack, the country's minister for administration and digitisation Michal Boni said the government had not carried out enough consultations with the public over the matter.

But following a meeting with Prime Minister Donald Tusk on Monday, Mr Boni said: "The Acta agreement in no way changes Polish laws or the rights of internet users and internet usage."

The government was threatened before, during and after the attack.

A message from Twitter user @AnonymousWiki after the sites went down read: "Dear Polish government, we will continue to disrupt and interfere with your government official websites until the 26th. Do not pass ACTA."

The user later posted: "We have dox files and leaked documentations on many Poland officials, if ACTA is passed, we will release these documents."

'Huge interest'

Government spokesman Pawel Gras insisted the slow performance of the websites was not due to targeted action, but instead was "just the result of huge interest in the sites of the prime minister and parliament".

His statement was mocked on social networks.

A recent draft of Acta said the agreement intended to improve "the enforcement of intellectual property rights" in participating countries.

It proposes to do this by setting international standards over how copyright infringements are dealt with.

Past drafts of the treaty suggested that internet service providers (ISPs) would have to give up data about their users if they accused of copyright infringement.

However the agreement's authors reassured ISPs that this was not the case.

Preventative measures include possible imprisonment and fines.

'Blackout' protests

The agreement has so far been signed by the United States, Australia, Canada, Japan, Morocco, New Zealand, Singapore and South Korea.

The Acta protest came days after co-ordinated opposition to US bills the Stop Online Piracy Act (Sopa) and Protest Intellectual Property Act (Pipa). Several high-profile websites went "dark" and took their content offline for a day.

House and Senate debates over the bills have since been postponed.

Like Sopa and Pipa, critics of Acta argue that the bill will stifle freedom of expression on the internet.

In 2009, a collective of non-governmental organizations, consumers unions and online service providers said Acta would "seriously hinder European innovation in the digital single market while undermining fundamental rights and democracy at large".

Polish opposition party, the Democratic Left Alliance, also said the government should not sign the agreement.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-16686265
https://twitter.com/#!/AnonymousWiki...59447803215872
https://twitter.com/#!/AnonymousWiki...59648395804672

[6souls]

After a 24-hour blackout, Wikipedia has returned to full working order but declared: "We're not done yet."

The site had blocked its content for 24 hours in protest at proposed anti-piracy legislation in the US.

The encyclopaedia said the site had been viewed 162 million times, with eight million people following instructions to contact politicians.

The protest led to eight US lawmakers withdrawing their support for the proposed bills.

Two of the bill's co-sponsors, Marco Rubio from Florida and Roy Blunt from Missouri, are among those who have withdrawn their support after "legitimate concerns".

But backers of the legislation, led by the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), described the action as an "irresponsible" publicity "stunt".

The Stop Online Piracy Act (Sopa) and Protect Intellectual Property Act (Pipa) have caused considerable controversy among internet users and businesses since the plans were proposed in October last year.

'Melted servers'

Wednesday's co-ordinated action was intended to raise the profile of the debate to those outside of the tight-knit technology community - an objective Wikipedia said had been met.

"More than 162 million people saw our message asking if you could imagine a world without free knowledge," the site said.

"You said no. You shut down Congress's switchboards. You melted their servers.

"From all around the world your messages dominated social media and the news. Millions of people have spoken in defence of a free and open internet."

Elsewhere, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg deemed the occasion worthy enough to post his first tweet in almost three years.

"Tell your congressmen you want them to be pro-internet," he wrote, linking to a longer statement on Facebook.

He continued: "We can't let poorly thought out laws get in the way of the internet's development.

"Facebook opposes Sopa and Pipa, and we will continue to oppose any laws that will hurt the internet."

Google, which urged its US visitors to sign a petition against the bills, said more than 4.5 million signatures had been gathered.

Advertising campaign

Supporters of the bill were quick to condemn the actions of the websites. Ex-Senator Chris Dodd, MPAA's chief executive, described the blackouts as an "abuse of power".

Ahead of the day's action, Mr Dodd said: "It's a dangerous and troubling development when the platforms that serve as gateways to information intentionally skew the facts to incite their users in order to further their corporate interests."

Meanwhile, Creative America - a group which represents many big names in the movie business including Disney and Warner Bros - has launched an advertising campaign in the US.

A banner advertisement was shown in New York's Times Square offering advice on "what to do during an internet blackout". It suggested reading books, listening to music or watching a movie.

News Corporation chairman Rupert Murdoch, a vocal supporter of Sopa, continued to spar with users on Twitter.

He tweeted: "Seems blogsphere has succeeded in terrorising many senators and congressmen who previously committed. Politicians all the same."

Watching closely

In the UK, the plans around Sopa and Pipa have been keenly watched, particularly by those worried about the effect the measures could have on internet companies in the country.

Peter Bradwell, a campaigner with the Open Rights Group, told the BBC: "It's explicit that [Sopa advocates] want to tackle foreign websites.

"We're concerned about the jurisdiction that gives over the kind of things you or I do on the internet in the UK - and the power that gives US copyright holders over the things that we do here."

Mr Bradwell recounted the comments made by Ed Vaizey, Minister for Culture, Communications and Creative Industries, who in July last year said he was looking at some anti-piracy measures being discussed in the US.

"Hopefully, what the storm around this has helped do is highlight why we are so concerned about proposals for new website blocking powers.

"I hope it really helps them understand how they shouldn't make policy, and really should drive home some of the complaints that we've been making."

'Startling'

The Department for Culture, Media and Sport said it did not wish to comment on the protests, nor on the details of Sopa and Pipa.

Eric Van Der Kleij, chief executive of the Tech City Investment Organisation, told the BBC: "We know that it is important for UK companies but it is definitely something for the US government. I am watching the situation closely.

"Regarding UK regulation, our position is that we are completely committed to an appropriate regulatory environment that protects rights but does not stifle innovation."

The UK's "digital champion" Martha Lane Fox said the blackout technique was surprising.

"Neutrality and equality of access is one of the fundamental principles of the internet," she told the BBC.

"So (while) I understand the concern that many US companies have about the restrictive Sopa law, blackouts are a startling way to show their frustration."

Constructive debate

Echoing the statements of rights holders in the US, Richard Mollet, chairman of the Publishers Association, criticised the blacked-out websites for not engaging "constructively" in the piracy debate.

"They should say: 'OK, there's a problem with copyright infringement. We, as internet companies, have a role here. What can we do to fulfil that role and help rights holders reduce infringement?'"

He argued that while Wikipedia was a valued resource, it would be more noticeable to the world if rights holders were to switch off their content for a day.

"Think what you would lose.

"If you walked around the streets of America or Britain with no creative content available to you, because rights holders had decided to shut up shop, you would be deprived of the BBC, cinemas, radio, bookstores and so on.

"What's at stake when rogue internet sites are available to people and revenues are deprived is a great deal more than the excellent but nevertheless more limited Wikipedia."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-16628143
https://www.facebook.com/zuck/posts/10100210345757211
https://www.google.com/landing/takeaction/
https://twitter.com/#!/rupertmurdoch...25611000057856
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-16608314

[6souls]

http://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/image...091_strike.jpg

A number of high-profile websites took part in "blackouts" on Wednesday to protest against two bills being considered by Congress to tackle copyright infringement.

The House of Representatives' Stop Online Piracy Act (Sopa) and the Senate's Protect Intellectual Property Act (Pipa) are designed to block access to sites containing unauthorised copyright material.

Content owners would be given the power to request court orders to shut down sites associated with piracy, and advertisers and ISPs would be forbidden from doing business with infringers based overseas.

Sopa would also require search engines to remove suspect foreign sites from their results.

A more detailed explanation of the bills can be read here.

The English-language site of Wikipedia, the user-generated news site Reddit and the comedy website network Cheezburger took part in the protest.

The WordPress blog system also took its homepages offline and urged the owners of the 70.4 million sites that use its service to join in.

The BBC asked some of the parties involved in the dispute to explain their positions.

http://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/image...1_57950754.jpg
Jimmy Wales, Wikipedia

Spoiler: show

At Wikipedia we are very strong defenders of freedom of speech and the open internet. We believe that if you want to combat piracy then measures that ask search engines to delist things or DNS services that block things are the wrong approach.

The right approach is to follow the money. To go after the people who are engaging in large scale criminal enterprises rather than burdening the entire internet with a regime that doesn't have very much promise of working.

And things could get really bad if we get into a situation where some of the worst burdens of these rules go through.

We have strong indications from venture capitalists that they would find it hard to invest in new start-ups in the user-generated content space.

Certainly innovations like Wikipedia would become very difficult if it were necessary for us to police everything that users were doing against some blacklist of websites.

In the worst case scenario we could have a situation where the US creates a Chinese style firewall in which sites can get blacklisted merely on an accusation. Some of the variations of the bill make it a little harder to get blacklisted, but in general we just think the entire approach is the wrong one.

Bad US law affects people all around the world. Look at the case of Richard O'Dwyer [the British student who created TVShack - a site which provided links to other pages containing pirated material].

The young man is being threatened with extradition to the US over alleged violations of US copyright law even though he lives in the UK and everything he did was on servers based in the UK.

A big part of Sopa is about dealing with overseas websites. That will have a huge impact on the very exciting UK IT internet start-up scene if it becomes likely that on a single complaint from a US movie studio some promising young British firm would be shut down.

We think it is a global issue because the US has such a strong impact on the internet.

Many of the supporters of this bill portray those of us who are against it as being somehow pro-piracy.

That is absolutely false. We are pro-freedom of speech.

Many of us, including me personally, are quite anti-piracy. I just want to fight piracy in a way that will really work and make a real difference.

http://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/image...293_mullen.jpg
Matt Mullenweg, WordPress

Spoiler: show

I've built my life on a free and open internet. As the co-founder of WordPress.org, a free software project that aims to democratise publishing, and the founder of Automattic, the company behind WordPress.com that hosts blogs from around the world in pursuit of the same goal, the proposed US legislation to regulate and censor the free and open foundation of the internet makes my mouth go dry with fear.

The rise of the web over the past two decades and the freedom to publish and express yourself online will be looked back upon as a cultural revolution.

We have gone from a world split between gatekeepers and media "consumers" to a world in which anyone regardless of geography, finances, social class, race, gender, or any other demographic identifier is free to engage with the rest of the world on their own terms.

That freedom is of paramount importance and must be protected.

That's why we're blacking out our websites on the 18th to raise awareness of this issue, and giving our users tools to do the same.

The tech world is fiercely competitive and companies seldom agree on anything, when you see so many united in solidarity on a single issue, you know there's something to it.

What concerns me the most about Sopa and the Protect IP Act is not that media companies and legislators want to have measures in place to protect copyright - for example we reply to and comply with DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) takedown notices on WordPress.com when we receive them, it works well for everybody - it's that the authors of the legislation don't seem to really understand how the internet works.

The definition of domestic versus foreign sites shows a woeful lack of comprehension about how domains are used and how traffic flows on the internet.

Where do I stand? On the side of publishing freedom.

What do I hope for? That these pieces of legislation be set aside, and that any future legislation in this arena be drafted by people who understand how the internet works - and how it won't if they do the wrong thing.

http://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/image...lo%27leary.jpg
Michael O'Leary , Motion Picture Association of America

Spoiler: show

There is a growing problem that entertainment and technology companies face across the world: rogue websites that profit from stolen content and counterfeit goods.

Many countries have taken reasonable measures to target this activity. Intellectual property laws have allowed commerce, innovation and free speech to flourish on the Internet.

In the United States, criminal websites located in other countries are engaging in destructive behaviour but are currently beyond the reach of our courts and law enforcement agencies. So, there should be nothing controversial about taking measures to limit the access of these foreign rogue websites - that engage in behaviour that is illegal for domestic websites - to American consumers and the American market

Measured legislation, the Stop Online Piracy Act and the Protect IP Act, has been introduced in Congress to address rogue websites and has been modified to address the concerns of the technology industry.

The importance of this legislation is evident in its broad support. It has the rare bipartisan support of Democrats and Republicans, the AFL-CIO (American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations) and Chamber of Commerce as well as a large coalition of businesses, unions, law enforcement officials and elected leaders from across the country.

The bills will encourage innovation while preserving millions of jobs that depend on intellectual property protection, including about 2.2 million Americans whose jobs depend on the film and television industries.

Unfortunately, opponents of the legislation have resorted to attacking the legislation without engaging in a real discussion of the provisions of the bill. Hopefully, this is not a stalling tactic to avoid targeting these foreign rogue websites and the profits they create for American companies that facilitate their illegal behaviour.

Recently, the Obama Administration stated that it looks forward to working with all parties to pass legislation this year to combat foreign piracy. All industries should work together to pass the legislation.

Every day that Congress fails to act on the legislation, American jobs are at risk and more consumers are vulnerable to criminal and malicious behaviour.

http://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/image...eve_bio2-1.jpg
Steve Tepp, US Chamber of Commerce

Spoiler: show

The controversy around the Protect IP and Stop Online Piracy Acts (Pipa and Sopa) has certainly gotten a lot of attention. We'd be concerned, too, if only the hyperbolic claims being thrown around actually pertained to these bills.

As it stands, there is a disconnect between the actual contents of the legislation and the claims being made against them.

Last week, both Senator Leahy and Congressman Smith, in a good-faith effort to address the concerns raised about the bill, announced they would roll back the provisions of these bills designed to block foreign criminal websites, striking a major conciliatory note with those who raised legitimate concerns.

That was on top of the changes that guarantee the bill applies only to foreign sites.

What remains are two pieces of legislation that are narrowly tailored and commercially reasonable for taking an effective swipe at the business models of rogue sites.

To those who are familiar with the legislation, the claims for potential of censorship, breaking the internet, and lack of due process have left us scratching our heads.

Both bills include narrowly tailored definitions of rogue sites, targeting the worst of the worst online counterfeiters and pirates.

The bills say only the Department of Justice can initiate a full and comprehensive federal court process to obtain a court order to ask payment processors, ad networks, and search engines to cut off their services to these illicit websites.

The victims of rogue sites are given an opportunity to bring a case at their own expense, with no possible chance to recover any money whatsoever, and an even more limited set of remedies. Further, an extensive checklist of due process and checks and balances are ensured to protect from potential misuse.

These bills are critically important and needed now. Our economy is hurting as we watch foreign counterfeiters and pirates recklessly chop away at our creative industries and the more than 19 million people they employ.

And rogue sites harm consumers with websites that look authentic, but in fact sell fakes like clothing, electronics, and medicine that are often shoddy and sometimes dangerous.

How big is this problem? Rogue sites garner over 53 billion visits a year.

Enforcement of intellectual property has yet to reach the 21st Century: Pipa and Sopa help plug this massive loophole.

We all recognise that theft is not a free market principle, which is why IP thieves are not allowed to flourish in the physical marketplace. We applaud our enforcement agencies for taking a hard stance on counterfeiters in the brick and mortar world, but they frankly lack the tools to apply existing laws to our digital storefronts.

What cannot be done is to do nothing. Indeed, there is broad consensus that something must be done to address online counterfeiting and piracy, which already costs the global economy $650bn (£432bn) annually.

Supporters and sponsors of the legislation have made a good faith effort in addressing reasonable concerns while constructing and amending the bills.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-16604990
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-16596577
http://wordpress.org/news/2012/01/help-stop-sopa-pipa/

[6souls]

http://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/image...89_sanfran.jpg

The past week has seen parts of the web in tumult. On Wednesday Wikipedia, WordPress and thousands of other sites took their content offline.

Webmasters offered warnings of the potential damage posed by the Stop Online Piracy Act (Sopa) and the Protect Intellectual Property Act (Pipa) - two bills being considered by members of the US Congress.

On Thursday the Department of Justice announced that it had shut down Megaupload, one of the internet's biggest file-sharing sites, and had charged several of its employees with copyright infringement.

On Friday "hacktivists" who align themselves under the name Anonymous mounted attacks against websites belonging to the US authorities, music companies and other advocates of a piracy crackdown.

The US Congress subsequently halted debate on the two bills for the time being.

The BBC asked a range of stakeholders to analyse the events and discuss what will happen next.

http://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/image...eofftaylor.jpg
Geoff Taylor, BPI

Spoiler: show

The attacks by hackers on the FBI, Department of Justice and creative industry and the recent protest by tech companies against new anti-piracy laws have exposed the dirty underbelly of the internet piracy economy.

Anonymous accuse governments and the creative community of being "tyrants" for trying to prevent them stealing other people's work. This illustrates the extremism of much of the anti-copyright movement.

Not only is it morally wrong to justify taking someone else's work for nothing, it ignores the simple truth that anything of value, including entertainment, takes time and money to create. One would hope that such naive views would carry little public influence. But they have some very powerful allies.

Under the guise of fighting for their vision of an "open internet", some Silicon Valley behemoths have launched a high-profile campaign to oppose new US laws to tackle major pirate websites. As publicity stunts for this campaign, Wikipedia closed for a day and Google "censored" its doodle, asking their users to oppose the legislation.

These large corporations argue that blocking access to some mass piracy sites amounts to Chinese-style censorship of free speech and will "break the internet" - ignoring that other types of illegal sites are routinely blocked, and people will always be free to express their points of view through the millions of perfectly legal websites that don't infringe copyright.

But is the tech community's opposition to tackling piracy motivated by principle - or by profit?

Many consumers see digital theft as a kind of victimless crime - musicians and film stars have loads of money, right?

In fact, most musicians earn less than the national average income and everyone who works in the creative sector, from roadies to mastering engineers, is negatively affected by piracy. But the money that downloaders save by taking music, films and books for nothing is flowing silently into the pockets of large tech corporations.

Online hosting services pay users to upload the most popular files and charge freeloaders for faster downloads.

Search giants earn billions from online advertising, with searches for illegal free music and films a major driver of traffic.

Broadband providers charge users for all the extra bandwidth they consume downloading stuff for free.

The internet advertising industry earns commission from the ads on pirate sites, and brands reach a huge audience cheaply.

This is the hidden internet piracy economy.

Most of the internet companies that benefit from this routinely claim that they don't support piracy. They may well be sincere. Yet they consistently oppose every new measure to tackle it, and offer up no effective alternatives of their own.

Long term, this cannot be the way forward.

Apple's former chief executive, the late Steve Jobs, understood that the creative and technology industries should be partners, and that consumers benefit from better quality services as a result. Spotify and others have taken up the mantle and there are new examples to welcome, with Google and some ISPs launching their own digital music services.

But if we want a digital economy that works, the big players on the internet need to kick their addiction to the money flowing from piracy. Like Steve Jobs, they need to show that they value other people's creativity as well as their own.

http://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/image...0_keybiard.jpg
Ernesto, Torrentfreak.com

Spoiler: show

Aside from increasing liability for many legitimate tech companies, the problem with the pending Sopa and Pipa bills is that they might achieve next to nothing in stopping piracy.

It may become easier to take out what the entertainment industry calls "rogue sites" dedicated to copyright infringement, but the recent past has shown that for every service that gets shut down, a dozen new ones appear.

Ten years ago the major threat was said to come from Napster, a few years later it was Limewire, and today it is Megaupload.

All these services are now offline but there are no signs that file-sharing is declining, on the contrary.

Instead of aggressively attempting to legislate piracy away and alienating consumers, a much better approach is to take a good look at why many people share copyrighted material.

To a great extent piracy can be interpreted as a marketing signal. Consumers see a mismatch between the offerings of the big media companies and their demands.

When the MP3-player (and iPod) first came along there was no way for people in some countries to legally buy songs to put on them.

The demand was huge but big media wasn't serving it. We still see a mismatch today, and it's one of the main motivations for people to pirate.

Piracy will always remain, but if the entertainment industries are smart enough they'll eventually deliver services that make unauthorised downloading obsolete for most people.

In Europe, for example, many people don't want to wait years before their favourite US shows air on TV, so they use file-sharing sites instead.

This is more about availability than the fact that these shows are free. The same is true for movies and music.

What the public wants is better services and increased availability at a fair price.

http://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/image...594_kroes2.jpg
Neelie Kroes, European Commission

Spoiler: show

I've said that we have to safeguard the benefits of an open internet and that Sopa is not the model for Europe. What we need instead is laws that are effective, proportionate and preserve the open internet we cherish.

Or, as I put it on Twitter, speeding is illegal but you don't stop it by putting speed bumps on the motorway.

In the digital age, our current copyright system is not succeeding in its objectives. I agree we should fight against piracy. But it's becoming increasingly hard to legally enforce copyright, and enforcement is only one side of the coin.

On top of that virtually all artists are earning under £800 a month from copyright. That's pretty devastating, for the artists themselves and for Europe as a whole.

There are lots of potential ideas out there for new systems of recognition and reward - but too often they are killed stone dead by rigid, pre-digital legislation.

Meanwhile legislation can discriminate against innovative forms of distribution - for example, e-books don't benefit from the same VAT reduced rates as "physical" books.

Overall, I have been clear that we need to go back to basics and put artists back at the centre of copyright law.

We need to ensure internet access is as widespread as possible. And we need to deal with piracy from both angles. Piracy won't be minimised until the amount of legally available content is increased.

http://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/image...10680_dutt.jpg
Prof William Dutton, University of Oxford

Spoiler: show

The worldwide diffusion of the internet is one of the most promising technological developments of the 21st Century. Over two billion people already use the internet and that number is set to grow as more people in the rapidly developing nations come online. There are already more Chinese users than there are Americans on the planet.

It is a core infrastructure for economic development in developed and rapidly developing nations alike, and is enabling networked individuals to hold governments and other institutions accountable in ways that are as powerful as the press in earlier eras.

However, the vitality of the internet, web and related technologies is being placed at risk by an ideologically blinkered stand-off between two single-issue groups - one seeking to protect copyright versus another protecting freedom of expression.

The internet and web grew out of a culture of sharing and free expression within academic communities, and more than 40 years on from the invention of the internet, many users remain supportive of online freedom of expression. Given the high levels of support for this underlying culture it should not be surprising that threats to freedom of expression have created major counter-reactions.

Legislative routes to protecting copyright would have a chilling effect on the internet, as they would usher in greater surveillance and governmental sanctioning of the blocking of content as well as the disconnection of users. That is why Wikipedia, Google and other responsible stakeholders in the internet have protested Sopa and Pipa.

At the very moment that protests over these legislative actions appeared to be gaining ground among US elected officials, the Department of Justice raised the stakes by taking the domain names of the Megaupload file-sharing site offline and charging its founders with violating piracy laws.

As a result the internet "hacktivist" group, Anonymous, launched its denial of service attacks. The actions of nearly every stakeholder in this conflict have been seriously uncompromising.

In the short run, it is time to talk and to stop these flame wars. Each side has failed to be open to discussion, but that is exactly what is needed. In the long term, the creative industries must focus on new business models that are sustainable in the digital era. Government can help support the research and development to enable these innovations.

More generally, all stakeholders need to understand that freedom of expression and copyright cannot be pursued as single issues. Both are part of a larger ecology of policies that have major interactions.

It is tempting to say that freedom of expression trumps all other values and interests, but the evidence is right before us that freedom of expression is being eroded by copyright, liability, privacy and data protection, public safety and other concerns. Single-issue political posturing could undermine the internet's future.

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Neil Roiter, Corero Network Security

Spoiler: show

Ideologically based attacks are now a fact of life. Organisations have to prepare for them and be ready to respond.

The distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks launched by Anonymous in the wake of the Megaupload takedown are not a surprise: these attacks are becoming the rule, rather than the exception.

Ideologically motivated groups, or "hacktivists", launch these DDoS attacks, in particular, at any time and for whatever rationale. We've just witnessed ideologically motivated attackers in the Middle East take down the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange and El Al Airlines sites.

Expect to see more of these types of attack. Some will be nuisances, while others will cause substantial damage by disrupting commerce, the flow of information and/or access to critical online services.

DDoS attacks are well within the means of any number of groups or individuals.

In this instance, we are seeing groups like Anonymous, which took credit for the attacks in the wake of the Megaupload takedown and arrests, enlist participants through the simple act of clicking on a link.

The fact is anyone can rent an army of compromised computers, also known as botnets, for some £60 and launch an attack that floods an organisation with false messages and brings a website to a halt. And the sophistication of attack methods is only increasing and becoming more difficult to detect. Organisations need to be vigilant.

Organisations such as the ones that have been targeted in these attacks should never be taken off-guard. Government agencies are by definition on the front line.

For example, industry groups such as the Recording Industry Association of America, the Motion Picture Association of America and the entertainment companies that have led the charge to suppress digital copyright infringement for years are in the crosshairs and likely calling fire down onto their foxholes.

Organisations and agencies can do a lot more than simply weather the storm. They must have corporate security policies, processes and technologies in place to detect, respond and mitigate.

These technologies include working with their ISPs to increase bandwidth to absorb DDoS flooding attacks; subscribing to services that can reroute some types of attack traffic or "scrub" traffic clean; and deploying on-premises appliances that are effective against all types of denial-of-service attacks.

Hacktivist attacks are a real and, we can expect, enduring threat for the foreseeable future. Every organisation is a potential target based on their actions, their corporate philosophy or simply who they are. They must protect themselves accordingly.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-16658923

[djzombie]

http://www.pcworld.com/article/24855...over_sopa.html

[Enedin]

Can't we just declare the internet as an independant state?

[Cantih]

It already is, have you not received your BlueGartr passport yet?

[Enedin]

I can see a virtual state called Internet. Where revenue comes from the states around the world. Every nation contributes through its users. The Internet users would pay a small fee to the Internet state per some unit (time, amount of data), and Internet invests that worldwide by paying state companies (such as the Ministries of Movies, Music, Art, Literature, which could be ruled by the current RIAA and MPAA along with YouTube/Google people) to provide us with easy access to everything.

So piracy isn't an issue: the Ministries of Movies and Music get paid by the users anyways. How would artists get paid? By people watching their videos on official channels which cost a tad more to watch (that goes to the artist), but guarantee the best quality and professionalism, paid for by the Ministries of Movies and Music.

- So artists get paid for being good 'cause people watch them.
- The RIAA/MPAA/Google/Facebook/etc (combined into Ministries) get paid by the Internet state.
- The Internet gets paid by the users.
- The current states get new jobs, created by the Internet State.
- We pay for content, but we already pay for it through our ISPs (who become the Ministry of Access).

So we end up with an Internet state that does all it does today, but our ISPs would be state Ministries.

Everybody wins.

[Caiyuo]

shit I'd probably pay an piracy tax on my ISP bill for a giant unrestricted internet registry of free shit

[Enedin]

shit I'd probably pay an piracy tax on my ISP bill for a giant unrestricted internet registry of free shit

You'd gladly pay the small fee for it since you know it's the best quality and professionalism, but the money would go straight to the artist: everyone else involved gets paid by the Internet state.

[hey]

I can see a virtual state called Internet. Where revenue comes from the states around the world. Every nation contributes through its users. The Internet users would pay a small fee to the Internet state per some unit (time, amount of data), and Internet invests that worldwide by paying state companies (such as the Ministries of Movies, Music, Art, Literature, which could be ruled by the current RIAA and MPAA along with YouTube/Google people) to provide us with easy access to everything.

So piracy isn't an issue: the Ministries of Movies and Music get paid by the users anyways. How would artists get paid? By people watching their videos on official channels which cost a tad more to watch (that goes to the artist), but guarantee the best quality and professionalism, paid for by the Ministries of Movies and Music.

- So artists get paid for being good 'cause people watch them.
- The RIAA/MPAA/Google/Facebook/etc (combined into Ministries) get paid by the Internet state.
- The Internet gets paid by the users.
- The current states get new jobs, created by the Internet State.
- We pay for content, but we already pay for it through our ISPs (who become the Ministry of Access).

So we end up with an Internet state that does all it does today, but our ISPs would be state Ministries.

Everybody wins.

lol

[Enedin]

lol

ok

[Greatguardian]

Internet's a sovereign state? US declares war on it.

[hey]

ok

Wait. Were you not joking?

[Enedin]

Wait. Were you not joking?

Nope. Obviously it's something that has got to be decennia ahead of its time, but I think something like that is the way to go to guarantee the Internet's independance. I'm not saying it will ever happen, or even in that form, but it's good to think about new models for the Internet at a time like this.

The world has slammed me with its ignorance countless times, I dream from time to time to keep that little boy with hope inside of me alive. It's hard to be optimistic when big bad USA is trying to kill freedom of speech while pretending it's the greatest country in the world.

[Qeomash]

You are free to say whatever you like, long as we agree with it.

[Ragnus]

Bump: This shit is starting up again except it's cutting government right out of it.

http://act.demandprogress.org/sign/backdoor_sopa/

Take Action: ISPs Selling Out Customers, Pushing Backdoor SOPA

They're selling us out. Just weeks after Internet users from across the globe came together to to beat SOPA, the major ISPs are cutting a deal with Big Content to restrict web access for users who are accused of piracy.

It'll do much of the dirty work we were able to prevent when we took down SOPA, this time by restricting certain Americans' access to the WHOLE Internet.

The details are fuzzy, but the head of the Recording Industry Association of America's bragged this week that ISPs will start policing copyright by July of this year. Here's RT's take:

Some of the biggest Internet service providers in America plan to adopt policies that will punish customers for copyright infringement, and one of the top trade groups in the music biz announced this week that it could begin as soon as this summer....

RIAA CEO Cary Sherman was one of the guest speakers among a New York panel this week and he confirmed that, at this rate, some of the most powerful Internet providers in America should have their new policies on the books by July 12, 2012.

The ISPs are poised to start treating their customers like criminals, restricting their access to the Internet. And they're cutting us off at the knees just ast we've begun to force a new conversation about Internet freedom and copyright law.

[kuronosan]

lol America...