Rocked by Internet protests, the U.S. Congress is postponing action on the Stop Online Piracy Act and the Protect IP Act.
Google's Censored Doodle
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid was scheduled to call a vote for PIPA on January 24. That was before Internet users and prominent websites staged a day of protest on Wednesday, which included a censored Google Doodle and blackouts of Wikipedia, Craigslist and Reddit. In light of the protests, several lawmakers withdrew their sponsorships of SOPA and PIPA, while others came out in opposition to the bill.
PIPA, and its House of Representatives counterpart SOPA, would give the U.S. Attorney General powers to cut off ad dollars, payments, and search engine indexing to websites accused of facilitating copyright infringement. Critics argue that the bills are too broad and would therefore result in collateral damage and censorship.
“There is no reason that the legitimate issues raised by many about this bill cannot be resolved," Reid says in a statement, adding that the Senate must take action to stop piracy.
PIPA/SOPA supporter Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont), miffed by this sudden turn of events, offers his own statement. “I understand and respect Majority Leader Reid’s decision ... But the day will come when the Senators who forced this move will look back and realize they made a knee-jerk reaction to a monumental problem.”
Lamar Smith (R-Texas)
Meanwhile, in Congress, Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas) announced that consideration of SOPA is on hold indefinitely. A hearing on the bill in the Judiciary Committee had been scheduled to resume in February.
“I have heard from the critics and I take seriously their concerns regarding proposed legislation to address the problem of online piracy,” Smith says in a statement. “It is clear that we need to revisit the approach on how best to address the problem of foreign thieves that steal and sell American inventions and products.”
This is only the beginning folks. Hold on tight - better watch your fav videos and grab your files while you can.
Protest ramps up: DDOS attacks cripple FBI and music publishers' sites.
The war on piracy in the United States has ramped up, with hacker group Anonymous claiming responsibility for an attack that crippled the FBI and US Department of Justice websites and targeted film and music companies.
Twitter accounts claiming to represent the hacktivist group announced this morning that it had taken down Justice.org, the department's website, as well as sites for Universal Music, the Motion Picture Association of America, and the Recording Industry Association of America.
The FBI's site was also brought down, going to a near-blank page with the message that the site could not be reached.
The group claim the attacks are in retaliation for the government shutting down the fire-sharing website Megaupload.com.
Megaupload.com was shut down earlier today after charges were laid against seven individuals from Megaupload and Vestor. Four of the defendants were arrested in Auckland, New Zealand.
The charges relate to criminal copyright.
About an hour after the indictments were unsealed, the public websites went down.
"WE ARE THE 99% - WE ARE #ANONYMOUS - YOU SHOULD HAVE EXPECTED US," said @AnonOps, a Twitter account managed by presumed Anonymous members.
Twitter is currently bombarded with hashtags relating to the attack, including The Internet Strikes Back.
Anonymous later stepped up the attack by publishing personal details the author claimed to be of MPPA's chief executive officer and former US senator Chris Dodd's family, including children's names and ages, property addresses and value, onto pastebin.com. Pastebin is regularly used by hackers to post details of their exploits.
The Megaupload indictment was filed as the US Congress considers anti-piracy legislation supported by the movie and music industries that has prompted a backlash from internet companies including Google and Wikipedia.
On Wednesday, Wikipedia shut down its English pages in protest against the proposed Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and Protect IP Act (PIPA), saying they would promote online censorship, disrupt the web's architecture and harm their ability to innovate.
The publisher was joined by other internet players including Google, and a chorus of opinion pieces and articles decrying the bills.
Then yesterday, the father of the world wide web, computer scientist Sir Tim Berners-Lee called for action against SOPA saying it violates human rights.
There for just letting all know if your ever in game with them do not trust them three and get rid of them as soon as possible, They pretended to be two alliance when they are really one! xx)
The truth be told, we had an alliance of 5, along with alexandra16.
The plan was to get rid of the actives, then the inactives and finally let the final 5 do what it may.
Instead, after we came to this agreement, I received the following PMs from matie2010:
from matie2010 11 hours 38 min ago
yep its me you and alex for final 3 x
got feeling icecold going try screw us over
from matie2010 11 hours 36 min ago
everytime we suggest someone like no don't evict them x
from matie2010 11 hours 33 min ago
i got plan for me,you, alex to be the final 3 xx
from matie2010 11 hours 32 min ago
basically when all the activies are gone
we need nom icecold and selene xx
from matie2010 11 hours 26 min ago
ill let you know when got perfect time round for it :) x
from matie2010 11 hours 20 min ago
when icecold is up we need to evict him x
While all this was happening, IceCold wasn't saying anything to me about a final 3. When the time came to make a move, matie2010 begun to realize something was up and finally told IceCold to nominate myself and Selene365.
So decide for yourself, who to trust, and who tried to backstab who?
Plus, whenever I try to post a response on the above referenced blog post - my comment mysteriously disappears. Hmmmmm???
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