ACTA (Global SOPA) Died Yesterday In Europe

How appropriate the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) died an ugly death in Europe, and likely globally, on our Independence Day.

Today at 12:56, the European Parliament decided whether ACTA would be ultimately rejected or whether it would drag on into uncertainty. In a crushing 478-to-39 vote, the Parliament decided to reject ACTA once and for all. This means that the deceptive treaty is now dead globally.

This is a day of celebration. This is the day when citizens of Europe and the world won over unelected bureaucrats who were being wooed and lobbied by the richest corporations of the planet. The battleground wasn’t some administrative office, but the representatives of the people – the European Parliament – which decided in the end to do its job beautifully, and represent the people against special interests.

The road to today’s victory was dark, hard, and by no means certain.[...]

In theory, ACTA could still come into force between the United States and a number of smaller states. Ten states have been negotiating it, and six of those need to ratify it to have it come into force. In theory, this could become a treaty between the United States, Morocco, Mexico, New Zealand, Australia, and Switzerland. (But wait, the Mexican Senate has already rejected ACTA. As has Australia and Switzerland in practice. Oh well… a treaty between the United States and Morocco, then, in the unlikely event that the United States will actually and formally ratify it. You can see where this is going.) Read more here...

Harry Reid retreats on Senate's Protect Intellectual Property Act

PIPA is the Senate version of SOPA. It looks like Dingy Harry has woke up and smelled the political coffee.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Yielding to strong opposition from the high tech community, Senate and House leaders said Friday they will put off further action on legislation to combat online piracy.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said he was postponing a test vote set for Tuesday "in light of recent events." Those events included a petition drive by Google that attracted more than 7 million participants and a one-day blackout by the online encyclopedia Wikipedia.

House Judiciary Committee chairman Lamar Smith, R-Texas, quickly followed suit, saying consideration of a similar House bill would be postponed "until there is wider agreement on a solution."

The Senate's Protect Intellectual Property Act and the House's Stop Online Piracy Act have strong support from the entertainment industry and other businesses that lose billions of dollars annually to intellectual property theft and online sales of counterfeit products. But they also have strong opposition from Internet-related companies that argue the bill would lead to over-regulation and censorship of the Internet. Keep on reading...

SOPA is severely wounded, but not dead

SOPA is "shelved" for now, but Harry Reid is still pushing the Senate version and the White House still wants to do something.

Via Forbes:

- In that same statement, the White House also said “While we believe that online piracy by foreign websites is a serious problem that requires a serious legislative response…” followed later by ““That is why the Administration calls on all sides to work together to pass sound legislation this year that provides prosecutors and rights holders new legal tools to combat online piracy originating beyond U.S. borders.” They still want to pass anti-piracy legislation this year.

- SOPA is not dead, it’s been “shelved” and won’t return “until a consensus is reached.”

- Protect IP (PIPA), the Senate version of the House bill, is still very much alive, and has not even been shelved, much less killed. It is equally as bad of an idea as SOPA, even if most protests are being directed at SOPA recently. Read more here...

Internet Inventor Al Gore Comes Out Against SOPA

I never thought I would be on the same side of an issue as Al Gore, but the Stop Online Piracy Act(SOPA) goes way too far.

Former Vice President (and Apple board member) Al Gore has some strong words against the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA).

The bill “would very probably have the effect of really shutting down the vibrancy of the Internet,” Gore said at a CareerBuilder event Thursday night.

SOPA, if passed, would give the U.S. federal government a wide array of powers for disabling a website it found to be in violation of copyright law. Many Internet users and tech companies, including Yahoo, Google and eBay, consider the bill dangerous to the structure of the Internet as we know it.

Gore certainly, if belatedly, agrees. “In our world today there is hardly anything more important than to save and protect the vibrancy and freedom of the Internet,” he said.

Hypocrisy: IP addresses assigned to House of Representatives engaged in illegal downloading

Congress wants to pass the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) which would hamstring bloggers, social networking sites and even YouTube. They claim they are protecting against copyright infringement. Strangely, they seem to en engaged in copyright infringement while they are trying to stop it. Oh well, they never thought the rules applied to them anyway. Learn why SOPA is very bad here.

Via BoingBoing:

The House, of course, has been mired in Internet controversy since Rep Lamar Smith introduced his Stop Online Piracy Act, which establishes a regime of national censorship in the name of fighting copyright infringement. So it is with some amusement that TorrentFreak points out that more than 800 of the IP addresses assigned to the House of Reps were involved in copyright infringement over BitTorrent, according to the YHD database. There's a big trove of self-help books in there, with titles like "Crucial Conversations- Tools for Talking When Stakes Are High," and who knows, maybe that's what Mr Smith was reading when he decided to sell out America to Hollywood?

Something that immediately caught our eye are the self-help books that are downloaded in the House. “Crucial Conversations- Tools for Talking When Stakes Are High,” for example, may indeed be of interest to the political elite in the United States. And “How to Answer Hard Interview Questions And Everything Else You Need to Know to Get the Job You Want” may be helpful for those who aspire to higher positions.