Editor’s note: U.S. Rep. Darrell Issa has represented California’s 49th Congressional District in the House of Representatives since 2001. Follow him on Twitter @DarrellIssa.
On June 11, 2012, I went all in on open. That day, I traveled to the Personal Democracy Forum (PDF) in New York City to launch the OpenGov Foundation, a non-profit dedicated to developing and deploying technology… → Read More
Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian and GM Erik Martin are running a $40,000 Indiegogo campaign to fund a bus trip across part of the country (from Kentucky to Denver) in order to talk about the Open Web this political season. The trip aims to “host meetups, highlight candidates who support free and open Internet, get people to sign up to vote, [and] feature local tech jobs.”
The trip is from… → Read More
Representative Darrell Issa (CA-49) signed the Declaration of Internet Freedom, a broad online declaration that aims to keep the internet free and open. Issa, chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, is the first elected official to sign the document.
Issa has been an outspoken opponent of the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA). Last month, he drafted “A Digital Citizen’s… → Read More
A big day today for those who have been opposed to measures like SOPA that are aimed at stronger, government-imposed measures to define and prevent counterfeiting and copyright infringement on the internet: the European Parliament has rejected the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), by a nearly-unanimous margin of 478 votes against to 39 in favor.
The rejection means that the European… → Read More
Even in an election year where Republicans and Democrats are at each others’ throats even more than usual, there is still one political issue in the United States that both sides have to get behind in order to stay in voters’ good graces: Job creation. And since so many jobs these days are created by startups and small businesses, a number of politicians have started championing initiatives to… → Read More
In the aftermath of the defeat of the Stop Online Piracy Act and Protect IP Act, a long list of organizations have sent a letter to Congress asking members to “take a breath” before they trying to push through new piracy legislation.
The letter argues that the “wide variety of important concerns” that were expressed during the SOPA/PIPA protests cannot be addressed through “hasty revisions” to… → Read More
On Friday The House withdrew the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) from being put to a vote and the Senate postponed voting on its version of the bill, the Protect IP Act (PIPA). As the debate continues over the best way to shield copyrighted material from being pirated, we invited David Sohn, General Counsel for the Center for Democracy and Technology and Viacom’s General Counsel, Michael Fricklas… → Read More
Before SOPA was pulled from the House yesterday, opponents of the bill argued (among other things) that sites accused of making copyrighted material available could be shut down without being given full, adverserial, due process. Was this an accurate assessment? Viacom’s General Counsel and EVP Michael Fricklas and David Sohn, General Counsel and Director of the Center for Democracy and… → Read More
The controversial Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) has been pulled and its Senate counterpart, the Protect IP Act (PIPA) is on hold. The Internet won this round, it seems. But don’t celebrate just yet. The forces behind these acts are simply regrouping. Should SOPA and PIPA be killed, or can they be fixed? We invited Viacom’s General Counsel and EVP Michael Fricklas and David Sohn, General Counsel… → Read More
Today was the internet’s big protest day against SOPA and PIPA, and not surprisingly, there was plenty of discussion about the issue on Twitter. Specifically, the company tweeted that that there were more than 2.4 million SOPA-related tweets between midnight and 4pm Eastern time. → Read More
Facebook may not be opposing the Stop Online Piracy Act and the Protect IP Act as prominently as some other websites — it’s not blacking out the site today, or even posting an anti-SOPA/PIPA message on its homepage — but CEO Mark Zuckerberg spoke out against the legislation in a post on his Facebook account. → Read More
This morning, online photo sharing site Flickr joined the growing number of web companies protesting the SOPA and PIPA legislation, which now include Google, Wikipedia, Reddit, Mozilla, and others. For a 24-hour period, starting today, Flickr is letting its members darken their own photos in an effort to raise awareness about the proposed, highly damaging legislation. But that’s not all – Flickr… → Read More
Tomorrow, Google’s US homepage will include a link declaring its opposition to the Stop Online Privacy Act and the Protect IP Act. The news was reported on CNET and confirmed by Google in a statement emailed to TechCrunch. → Read More
Wikipedia’s Jimmy Wales wanted to send a “big message” to the U.S. government regarding the two heinous internet censorship bills currently being considered, and after a brief period of debate the world’s encyclopedia will soon do just that.
The Wikipedia founder announced on Twitter today that starting at midnight on Wednesday, January 18, the English language version of the world’s… → Read More
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