Quite a few people are comparing CIPSA to SOPA but the truth is CIPSA is much different and a lot worse. CISPA is supported by major companies like Facebook, Google, Twitter, and major ISP’s like Verizon and AT&T.

The Bill overrides existing laws and allows corporations to give unlimited information to the government like stored data, private emails, web history, downloads, etc. without legal accountability.

Rep. Rogers is adamant that the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) is an information “sharing” bill. But despite the bill’s title and Rep. Rogers’ assurances, the bill is also a surveillance bill:

- Its broad definitions allow private companies to monitor network traffic and stored data—including private email—and transfer such private data to the government or others with virtually no oversight or legal accountability. This lack of oversight and accountability stems from the sweeping immunities provided to companies, which bypass long-standing privacy law.

- Under CISPA, private companies may spy on user communications, whether stored or in transit, and freely pass personal information to the government as long as they claim a vague “cybersecurity” exception.

- As long as companies act in “good faith” and the collection is for a “cybersecurity purpose”—a purpose as vague as protecting or securing any network from degradation or disruption—there are no limits on what type of information can be intercepted and shared. 

- The bill also creates expansive legal immunity that makes companies and the government largely unaccountable to users. 

- If a company learns about a security flaw, fails to fix it, and users’ information is misused or stolen, companies cannot beheld liable as long as the company acted “in good faith” according to CISPA. 

- Companies “acting in good faith” are also excused from all liability for engaging in potential counter measures, even if they hurt innocent parties.

- CISPA grants surveillance power to private entities “not withstanding any other provision of law,” which may nullify existing rights to sue under laws such as the Wiretap Act, the Stored Communications Act, and the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. 

- Combined with the bill’s broad “good faith” immunity, this scheme attacks our long-held legal traditions that create checks and balances through independent judicial oversight.

If CISPA passes, companies lose any legally based incentive to protect user privacy.

Source / Read More About CISPA and Sign The Petition

Read more about CISPA here. 

Sign the petition to fight against the bill. Here is a list of companies that support CISPA (Facebook, Verizon and AT&T support the bill). You can also write a letter to your local representative to protest CISPA here.

We mentioned recently that the Chief Tech Policy Officer at the MPAA, Paul Brigner, had jumped ship to the Internet Society — whose position on SOPA was diametrically opposed to the MPAA’s position on SOPA and similar concepts. While there was some concern that ISOC was moving away from its strong internet freedom stance, many of us suspected that perhaps the reason Brigner jumped ship was that his own views were much more in line with ISOC’s. Indeed, he’s now told News.com that he thinks SOPA isn’t just a bad idea, but that it’s not good for the health of the internet:

“Did my position on this issue evolve over the last 12 months? I am not ashamed to admit that it certainly did,” Brigner writes. “The more I became educated on the realities of these issues, the more I came to the realization that a mandated technical solution just isn’t mutually compatible with the health of the Internet.”

And how does the MPAA feel about this?

A spokesman for the MPAA said his organization would not comment on Brigner’s volte-face.

Well, what can you say when your (now former) chief tech expert agrees with what every other tech expert has been saying all along?

Source

CISPA Replaces SOPA As Internet’s Enemy No. 1 (Must Read)

The Internet has a new enemy. The Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act of 2011 (CISPA), also known as H.R. 3523, is a “cybersecurity” bill in the House of Representatives. While CISPA does not focus primarily on intellectual property (though that’s in there, too), critics say the problems with the bill run just as deep. 

As with SOPA and PIPA, the first main concern about CISPA is its “broad language,” which critics fear allows the legislation to be interpreted in ways that could infringe on our civil liberties. The Center for Democracy and Technology sums up the problems with CISPA this way:

    •    The bill has a very broad, almost unlimited definition of the information that can be shared with government agencies notwithstanding privacy and other laws;
    •    The bill is likely to lead to expansion of the government’s role in the monitoring of private communications as a result of this sharing;
    •    It is likely to shift control of government cybersecurity efforts from civilian agencies to the military;
    •    Once the information is shared with the government, it wouldn’t have to be used for cybesecurity, but could instead be used for any purpose that is not specifically prohibited.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) adds that CISPA’s definition of “cybersecurity” is so broad that “it leaves the door open to censor any speech that a company believes would ‘degrade the network.’”

Moreover, the inclusion of “intellectual property” means that companies and the government would have “new powers to monitor and censor communications for copyright infringement.”

Furthermore, critics warn that CISPA gives private companies the ability to collect and share information about their customers or users with immunity — meaning we cannot sue them for doing so, and they cannot be charged with any crimes.

According to the EFF, CISPA “effectively creates a ‘cybersecurity’ exemption to all existing laws.”

“There are almost no restrictions on what can be collected and how it can be used, provided a company can claim it was motivated by ‘cybersecurity purposes.’” the EFF continues.

“That means a company like Google, Facebook, Twitter, or AT&T could intercept your emails and text messages, send copies to one another and to the government, and modify those communications or prevent them from reaching their destination if it fits into their plan to stop cybersecurity threats.”

Read the full text of CISPA here, or the full official summary at the bottom of this page.

Read More & SIGN THE PETITION TO SAVE THE INTERNET FROM CISPA

Obama And ISP’s To Launch Largest Digital Spying Scheme In History (Must Read)

If you download potentially copyrighted software, videos or music, your Internet service provider (ISP) has been watching, and they’re coming for you.

Specifically, they’re coming for you on Thursday, July 1.

That’s the date when the nation’s largest ISPs will all voluntarily implement a new anti-piracy plan that will engage network operators in the largest digital spying scheme in history, and see some users’ bandwidth completely cut off until they sign an agreement saying they will not download copyrighted materials.

Word of the start date has been largely kept secret since ISPs announced their plans last June. The deal was brokered by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), and coordinated by the Obama Administration. The same groups have weighed in heavily on controversial Internet policies around the world, with similar facilitation by the Obama’s Administration’s State Department.

The July 1 date was revealed by the RIAA’s CEO and top lobbyist, Cary Sherman, during a publishers’ conference on Wednesday in New York, according to technology publication CNet.

The content industries calls this scheme a “graduated response” plan, which will see

-Time Warner Cable

-Cablevision

-Comcast

-Verizon

-AT&T

and others spying on users’ Internet activities and watching for potential copyright infringement. Users who are “caught” infringing on a creator’s protected work can then be interrupted with a notice that piracy is forbidden by law and carries penalties of up to $150,000 per infringement, requiring the user to click through saying they understand the consequences before bandwidth is restored, and they could still be subject to copyright infringement lawsuits.

Read More

Response: This is much worse than SOPA/PIPA and ACTA. It doesn’t necessarily censor the internet but it spys on everything you do. Your ENTIRE web history will be watched and recorded and might even assist the government. This was coordinated by Obama and his administration with the help of the MPAA and RIAA.

What is so dangerous about this is that this is not a law it is a policy adopted by several companies. That means this will not be debated in Congress and you will agree to be spied on by signing a contract with the company.

Internet censorship is becoming a reality and now the corporate elite will legally be able to spy on you. If we spread this and cause an uproar like what we did with SOPA, maybe they will back down. Either way people NEED to know about this.

Ireland Signs ‘Irish SOPA’ Into Law

Ireland has signed a controversial amendment dubbed the “Irish SOPA” which reinforces existing copyright law amid widespread concern that it will encroach on Internet freedom.

The new legislation will effectively allow copyright holders to press for legal action against Internet service providers and social networks which show content that infringes copyright legislation. It will force Internet service providers to effectively become censors, by blocking access to these sites.

Irish Minister for Research and Innovation Sean Sherlock said that the amendments, signed on Thursday, were more limited than the original proposal after a European court ruled that Internet service providers could not be “proactive” censoring sites.

Sherlock’s statement did not address the controversy surrounding the new law. Instead, he called for

“all interested parties to focus now on making Ireland a model of international best practice for innovation, and ensuring that our copyright laws facilitate the achievement of this goal.” 

The new law has been a bone of contention over the past month, with protests being held across Ireland and an Internet petition opposing the legislation gathering over 80,000 signatories. 

Hacktivist group Anonymous also targeted the Irish government when the amendments were announced at the end of January, breaking into Department of Justice and Department of Finance websites. 

“This legislation subverts the democratic process, favors the special interests of corporations over the rights of individual citizens, will destroy the largest growth sector in the Irish economy, and will subject the citizens of Ireland to unwarranted and unintended censorship,”  

reads the declaration on the official petition website against the “Irish SOPA”.

In a similar development, the EU suspended the ratification of its controversial ACTA legislation, whose proposed powers are similar to its American analogues. The move followed days of resistance, including street rallies, against what has been labeled an undemocratic bill.

Source

Lamar Smith is the sponsor of SOPA and the so-called Protecting Children From Internet Pornographers Act of 2011.

Both bills enforce internet censorship and create harsh punishments for copyright infringers.

MegaUpload faces more copyright, wire fraud charges

A U.S. grand jury added more charges against file-sharing website Megaupload and its executives, and also accused them of taking copyrighted content from sites such as YouTube for its own service, according to a new indictment released on Friday.

The founder, Kim Dotcom, and six others employed by the site were charged with eight additional counts of copyright infringement and wire fraud. They were originally charged with five counts of conspiracy and copyright infringement.

Dotcom and four of his co-workers have been arrested and are awaiting extradition proceedings in New Zealand and the Netherlands. Two suspects remain at large.

Read More

Lamar Smith, the lead sponsor of SOPA, is at it again!

A U.S. House committee has approved a bill sponsored by Lamar Smith that would force Internet Service Providers to to keep track of and retain their customers’ information — including your name, address, phone number, credit card numbers, bank account numbers, and temporarily-assigned IP addresses.

ISPs would collect and retain your data whether or not you’re accused of a crime.

The bill was shamelessly dubbed ‘Protecting Children From Internet Pornographers Act’ despite having nothing to do with child pornography.  

Rep. Zoe Lofgren of California, who led Democratic opposition to the bill said, “It represents a data bank of every digital act by every American [that would] let us find out where every single American visited Web sites.”

Sign the petition to tell Congress not to pass the bill. Texas, repeal this man already!

Germany Pauses ACTA Signing

Germany has halted signing the controversial ‘agreement’ after the justice ministry voiced concerns.

The Associated Press reports Germany’s that Justice ministry believes the legislation is unnecessary in Germany and that the European Parliament should vote on Acta before the country considers it for ratification.

Anti-Acta websites currently list more than 50 protests scheduled to take place across Germany on Saturday.

Last week about 2,000 people marched in the Slovenian capital, Ljubljana against Acta.

According to stop-acta.info, 123,710 will be protesting against ACTA in Germany and around the globe. 

Source

SOPA/Killswitch Bill Sneaks Back Into Congress And Are Stronger Than Ever - Get Ready For Round 2!

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D) will lead his second effort of 2012 to push Internet-regulating legislation, this time in the form of a new cybersecurity bill.

The expected bill is the latest attempt by the Democrats to broadly expand the authority of executive branch agencies over the Internet.

The details of the bill still remain in secrecy but clues available to the public suggest that the bill might be stronger than President Barack Obama’s ‘Killswitch emergency cybersecurity’ proposal, which was released in May 2011.

The Killswitch bill allows the president to ‘declare a cyber emergency’ and shut down the internet.

Reid said that he would bring the bill — expected to come out of the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee, chaired by Connecticut independent Sen. Joe Lieberman — to the floor during the first Senate work period of 2012.

Just to be clear:

• This bill is worse than SOPA, it will censor the internet and allow the President to shut it down much like what happened to Egypt during the Arab Spring
• The Obama Administration not only supports the likes of the bill, but proposed it
• The Government will have full control over the internet
• The Government will have FULL CONTROL over the internet
• Private-sectors, the state and the government will be granted immunity
• The Government will have full control over the internet
• Websites thought to be ‘infringing’ copyright laws will be seized by the government
• Internet entrepreneurship will be endangered
• YouTube will disappear (oh no!)

If you haven’t lost your faith in the Obama Administration, take a look at this. Obama plans to create a law that would mandate every American to have an ‘internet id’. 

SOPA is not dead and neither is the Killswitch bill. As soon as I have any new information I will update this post.

Source/Credit

While lawmakers dream of a censored web, you can download tribler for file sharing. Tribler is the next generation in p2p and it is IMMUNE to censorship.

We Are Pirates United

P.S. Don’t be a dick, remember to seed.

Chris Dodd, CEO of MPAA and Former Congressman, Publicly and Directly Threatens Politicians Who No Longer Support SOPA

Reinforcing the fact that Chris Dodd really does not get what’s happening, and showing just how disgustingly corrupt the MPAA relationship is with politicians, Chris Dodd went on Fox News toexplicitly threaten politicians who accept MPAA campaign donations that they’d better pass Hollywood’s favorite legislation… or else:

“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,”

Public Knowledge issued a fantastic statement that not only highlights the ridiculousness of Dodd’s threats, but also the hypocrisy of the Hollywood studios on this issue:

Public Knowledge welcomes constructive dialog with people from all affected sectors about issues surrounding copyright, the state of the movie industry and related concerns. Cybersecurity experts, Internet engineers, venture capitalists, artists, entrepreneurs, human rights advocates, law professors, consumers and public-interest organizations, among others should be included. They were shut out of the process for these bills. 

We suggest that in the meantime, if the MPAA is truly concerned about the jobs of truck drivers and others in the industry, then it can bring its overseas filming back to the U.S. and create more jobs. It could stop holding states hostage for millions of dollars in subsidies that strained state budgets can’t afford while pushing special-interest bills through state legislatures. While that happens, discussions could take place.

Source

A petition on WhiteHouse.gov has raised more than 26,000 signatures to demand Chris Dodd and MPAA be investigated for bribery.

Sign the petition here.

ACTA is treaty disguised as an agreement so that Congress and the Supreme Court cannot vote on it.

For the US: We can start by convincing Congress to declare ACTA a treaty so they can vote on it. Even then, ACTA has a chance of passing in the U.S. but it will be easier to fight. 

To stop ACTA in Europeyou can call members of the INTA committeeto ask that their report on ACTA recommend the Parliament reject it, and to tell them about the dangers of ACTA.

This needs to be done quick, the European Parliament will vote on June 201 to either ratify or reject ACTA.

While SOPA may be dead (for now) in the U.S., lobby groups are likely to intensify their efforts to export SOPA-like rules to other countries. Parliament of Canada is planning on passing a very similar bill called Bill C-11.

Groups such as the Canadian Independent Music Association and the Entertainment Software Association of Canada have been advocating for Ottawa to expand the provision to allow them to go after not just sites containing copyright-infringing content, but also those ‘enabling’ acts of infringement as well.

The music industry is demanding new provisions that would “permit a court to make an order blocking a pirate site such as The Pirate Bay to protect the Canadian marketplace from foreign pirate sites.”

The music industry also wants Internet providers to be required to adopt a termination policy for subscribers that are alleged to be repeat infringers. According to the industry.

To incent service providers to cooperate in stemming piracy by requiring them to adopt and reasonably implement a policy to prevent the use of their services by repeat infringers and by conditioning the availability of service provider exceptions on this being done.

This means users in Canada may be banned from accessing the internet! There is no indication in the music industry document of due process or even proof of infringement.

According to the music industry document, Bill C-11’s “enabler provision” should be expanded to include “services that are primarily operated to enable infringement or which induce infringement.”

Those demands are echoed by the Entertainment Software Association of Canada, which called on the government to “amend the enabling provision to ensure that it applies to services that are ‘designed or operated’ primarily to enable acts of infringement.” Both groups also want statutory damages added to the enabler provision so that liability can run into the millions of dollars for a target website. 

The expansion of the enabler provision to include sites that operate to enable or induce infringement could extend far beyond so-called “pirate sites”, since many user generated content sites (such as YouTube) and cloud-based service sites can be said to enable or induce infringement, particularly in a country like Canada that does not have a fair use provision.

Bill C-11 would make it illegal to save a DVD on your personal computer, even for fair dealing purposes. Ripping a CD/DVD or recording a show/movie via DVR will also become illegal under C-11!

Websites will be mandated to “retain records that will allow the identity of the person to whom the electronic location belongs to be determined, and do so for six months”

If the website refuses to submit identifying information about the infringer, they will be fined “not less than $5,000 and not more than $10,000.”

That raises another question, what if the website cannot identify the user? We they still be charged, will the website then be shut down, or will hiding your ip via proxy/Tor become illegal?

Credit

You can read the Bill on the Parliament of Canada website.

A protest against Bill C-11 will be held on Feb. 10, at Norman Bethune Square at 2pm local time. [1]

If you are a Canadian, contact your representative and send him/her a letter or email. Script