Us IRL on Monday. (Photo: Flickr)

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. 

The hacker collective posted a salty letter on its "Anon Insiders" blog earlier today demanding that the American government will "not get our Internet" and lambasted CISPA for turning social media sites into "legally untouchable government spies."

So, this is how Anons will fight back:

We are going dark on MONDAY April 22nd at 6 AM GMT for 24 hours to protest your illogical and terrorizing bill against the Internet itself. Even with the whole Internet crying out to stop this BILL, the US House of Representatives failed to do so blinded by lobbyist’s money and cum in your eyes.

Huffington Post notes that the group doesn't plan on attacking the Internet on Monday, rather it's requesting sites from operating similar to last year's SOPA protest. And there's already a hashtag associated with the event called #CISPABlackout. So far, it seems to be receiving an apathetic response since only 3,000 tweets containing it have been recorded.

But Anonymous shouldn't enter full-on freak-out mode yet. CISPA will now move to the Democratic-controlled Senate where it will face a tougher fight and President Obama has threatened to veto the bill if it landed on his desk.

After this shit week, it sure feels like Anonymous is doing all us a favor by granting us an excuse to have a long weekend. Thanks?

TorrentFreak explains how the SOPA virus works:

[The] SOPA virus holds all files on the host computer ransom.

“Your computer is locked!” the splash screen above warns, adding:

"If you see a warning.txt or warning screen, it means your IP address was included in S.O.P.A. Black List. One or more of the following items were made from your PC:
1. Downloading or distributing audio or video files protected by Copyright Law.
2. Downloading or distributing illegal content (child porn, phishing software, etc.)
3. Downloading or distributing Software protected by Copyright Law.
As a result of these infringements based on Stop Online Piracy Act (H.R. 3261) your PC and files are now blocked."

Now that the unwitting virus victim is terrified, the program goes in for the kill by warning that those who "don't pay the fine within 72 HOURS at the amount of 200 USD all your computer data will be erased." The ransom can be paid by a prepaid MoneyPak voucher or Western Union, depending on the victim's location.

Because it makes so much sense for the feds to ignore alleged downloading of child porn or copyrighted material as long as they receive a mere $200 in return.

Don't be scared if this pops up. After all, further action on SOPA was postponed by the U.S. House in January, 2012.

Simply search out guides to removing the ransomware, such as this one from YooSecurity. The same outfit created the helpful video below, which walks users through the steps to regaining control of a kidnapped computer--and hopefully restoring some peace of mind.

Video by YooSecurity.com.

Mr. Nguyen.

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.

The site lists SOPA supporters and opponents along with basics about their committee positions and financial contributions by industry based on publicly available data such as the New York Times Congress API, GovTrack.us and OpenSecrets. Unfortunately, the majority of Congress members' positions are unknown. But maybe hacks like this website will pressure them to speak up!

"SOPA Opera is meant to be a neutral resource where you can find the positions and statements of our U.S. representatives on the pending SOPA and PROTECT-IP legislation," Mr. Nguyen writes. "I created this site because while I had read a lot of rhetoric about these laws, I found it extremely frustrating to find exactly who supported these laws and for what reasons."

He adds:

Obvious disclosure: Pretty much everything behind this site's technical operation – including the hosting (DreamHost and Rackspace), analytics and APIs (Google), open-source libraries (most of GitHub's userbase) and the Internet infrastructure – is dependent on companies and developers who are avowedly against the proposed laws.

Mr. Nguyen posted the site to Hacker News and Reddit, where it got some traction. It hasn't asploded yet, he told Betabeat via Twitter, and he still has things to add ("redesign/flesh it out, while keeping its data up-to-date as the Congressional debate continues"). SOPA Opera joins the Chrome extension that displays a red banner across sites run by companies that don't support SOPA.

GoDaddy was also accused of delaying some of the domain transfers in the wake of the SOPA debacle.

As we've seen with hapless Wisconsin rep Paul Ryan, whose mere lack of opposition to SOPA was enough to put him in anti-SOPA advocates' sights, civically-inclined citizens of the internet are not satisfied with a "do not support." The bill, which would allow for government intervention if a website is hosting copyrighted content, even if that content comes from users, has been the cause of much handwringing. Internet users see it as a case of big media and Hollywood co-opting Congresspeople who then immediately reveal their utter ignorance of how the internet works during Congressional testimony.

An amendment introduced earlier this month stipulated that the bill only applies to foreign websites. The bill also provides immunity for financial institutions and online ad networks. According to the Judiciary Committee, the bill has strong support. SOPA's supporters including committee chairman Lamar Smith (R-Texas) have been pushing their message hard in response to accusations that the bill would "break the internet," saying critics' claims are unfounded or "lies."

The vote will be scheduled in early January.

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.

GoDaddy previously released a statement supporting SOPA before the House started hearings on the act, near-universally loathed by Internet natives. Despite the fact that GoDaddy opens itself up to potential liability under SOPA, the company writes that, "Go Daddy has a long history of supporting federal legislation directed toward combating illegal conduct on the Internet."

As self-prodigy notes, the call for action has already gotten attention beyond just Reddit. Today, GoDaddy posted its statement of SOPA support dated October 28, 2011 in response to customers asking about the company's position. In bold font just above the statement, the company writes, "Online copyright laws won’t prevent a flourishing Internet." Sorry, dudes, bolding it doesn't make it true.

The post also garnered interest from competing domain registrars including Name.com and HostGator, which offered discount codes under the name NODADDY and NOSOPA. I believe this is what they talk about when they talk about the free market.

UPDATE: Note from the field, CheezBurger Nation CEO Ben Huh, tweeted out, "We will move our 1,000 domains off @godaddy unless you drop support of SOPA. We love you guys, but #SOPA-is-cancer to the Free Web."

Here's how things played out.

The tweet in question came from Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) tweeted out,

zing!

Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, a Texas Democrat who CNET notes was was named the "meanest" member of congress by Washingtonian magazine, wasn't having it. She stopped the hearing to read the tweet out loud and declared that Rep. King should apologize for his offensive behavior.

At this point Rep. F. James Sensenbrenner (R-Wisc.) suggested that the word "offensive" was itself offensive and should be stricken from the record. A ludicrous back-and-forth ensued.

In the meantime, all the amendments to the bill which would have removed the worst parts of the bill, like DNS blocking, were voted down by the pro-SOPA majority on the committee.

We'll leave you with the words of 83 engineers instrumental in building the internet, from their open letter to Congress:

"Censorship of Internet infrastructure will inevitably cause network errors and security problems. This is true in China, Iran and other countries that censor the network today; it will be just as true of American censorship. It is also true regardless of whether censorship is implemented via the DNS, proxies, firewalls, or any other method. Types of network errors and insecurity that we wrestle with today will become more widespread, and will affect sites other than those blacklisted by the American government."

Well, you should be!

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. 

Corynne McSherry at the EFF writes:

As with its Senate-side evil sister, PROTECT-IP, SOPA would require service providers to “disappear” certain websites, endangering Internet security and sending a troubling message to the world: it’s okay to interfere with the Internet, even effectively blacklisting entire domains, as long as you do it in the name of IP enforcement. Of course blacklisting entire domains can mean turning off thousands of underlying websites that may have done nothing wrong.  And in what has to be an ironic touch, the very first clause of SOPA states that it shall not be “construed to impose a prior restraint on free speech.” As if that little recitation could prevent the obvious constitutional problem in what the statute actually does.

SOPA would also up the pressure on service providers to police everything that they host or support. With large scale web platforms like YouTube or Tumblr, this is an increasingly massive and expensive task. Google also has to take into account the political implications of takedown notices, for example when it gets requests from law enforcement agencies to remove videos of police brutality.

Creating the ability to blacklist sites has frightening possibilities for future censorship. As Ms. McSherry writes, "The bill also requires that search engines, payment providers (such as credit card companies and PayPal), and advertising services join in the fun in shutting down entire websites. In fact, the bill seems mainly aimed at creating an end-run around the DMCA safe harbors. Instead of complying with the DMCA, a copyright owner may now be able to use these new provisions to effectively shut down a site by cutting off access to its domain name, its search engine hits, its ads, and its other financing even if the safe harbors would apply."

The great irony of course, is that the DMCA safe harbor hasn't prevented innovative companies from finding success streaming video and music. In fact studies show that piracy is countered most effectively by providing consumers with a compelling paid alternative, like Spotify or Hulu. And experts believe that the new legislation will actually make the internet less safe and less stable, by interfering at the DNS level.

PROTECT IP Act Breaks The Internet from Fight for the Future on Vimeo.