Anonymous has a totally calm and measured response to yesterday’s news that CISPA, a controversial law that would let the government access personal data from Internet companies without a warrant, passed the House of Representatives: it’s demanding that websites “blackout” on Monday. Read More
Virus makers sometimes create what amount to digital versions of the creepy guy on the corner in a trenchcoat trying to convince kids to get in his ‘police van.’ The SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) virus is just the latest and worst example of this. It’s called ransomware, and it will lock down a victim’s computer and give them an ugly scare in the process.
TorrentFreak explains how the SOPA virus works: Read More
The most effective way to campaign against a particular piece of legislation in this country is to go after the elected officials behind it. There has been some confusion as to who in Congress supports and who opposes the increasingly unpopular Stop Online Piracy Act, but now local Manhattanite and ProPublica developer Dan Nguyen has created a website, SopaOpera.org, to clear things up. Read More
In the last week, GoDaddy has rescinded its support for the Stop Online Piracy Act, announced its opposition to the bill’s Senate companion Protect IP Act, and had itself taken off Congress’s list of SOPA supporters. “We have observed a spike in domain name transfers, which are running above normal rates and which we attribute to GoDaddy’s prior support for SOPA, which was reversed,” CEO Warrn Adelman said in a statement released yesterday. “GoDaddy opposes SOPA because the legislation has not fulfilled its basic requirement to build a consensus among stake-holders in the technology and Internet communities. Our company regrets the loss of any of our customers, who remain our highest priority, and we hope to repair those relationships and win back their business over time.” Read More
A post submitted just six hours ago has already hit the top of Reddit with 1,927 comments and (quickly) counting. In it, a user who goes by the pseudonym self-prodigy claims to be an IT director for a major American company, and urges his/her fellow Redditors to declare December 29th the day to transfer domains away from GoDaddy as a sign of protest against the company’s support the Stop Online Privacy Act.
According to the post, self-prodigy claims to have already transferred 51 personal domains and 300 professional ones in his/her capacity as IT director. Go Daddy, the perpetrator of those tacky spokesbabe Superbowl ads, has more than 50 million domain names under management, and is currently largest domain name registrar worldwide. Read More
It’s embarrassing enough to watch politicians who don’t know a server from a waiter debating the SOPA legislation that the architects of the internet say will make the web less effective and less safe. But yesterday the members of the Judiciary Committee decided to spend a good portion of the time they set aside to discuss these news laws insulting each other on Twitter and arguing over inane parliamentary procedures. Read More
In the ongoing quest to end the vile practice of illegally downloading music and movies, Congress is considering new legislation, SOPA, or Stop Online Piracy Act. But according to the EFF, the new law would allow for domain takedowns and eliminate the DMCA safe harbor, radically shifting the level of enforcement possible. Read More
