Facebook today explained why it has taken a positive stance on the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act, or “CISPA”, bill currently under consideration in the United States Congress. The social networking company is one of a group of tech companies that have announced support for CISPA — Microsoft, Oracle, Intel, IBM, and Symantec are also among its backers.
In a post today on the official blog for Facebook’s Washington D.C. office, the company’s U.S. public policy VP Joel Kaplan wrote that Facebook is supporting CISPA in part because it would not ask Facebook to share any more of its own user data than is currently required. → Read More
Move over organized cybercriminals, the new gangs in town don’t want our money, but they want to make a point, and they’re going to do whatever it takes to make sure we listen. The annual Data Breach Investigations Report (embedded below this post) from Verizon and major security agencies has found that hacktivism from the likes of Anonymous accounted for 58 percent of all data stolen online in 2012 — a contrast with years past, when organized crime groups were the main culprits.
And, as is the way with hacktivists, they work on large volumes of records rather than multiple, targeted opportunities: “The megabreach is back,” said Chris Porter, principal on the Risk team at Verizon.
In an investigation that also involved United States Secret Service, the Dutch National High Tech Crime Unit, the Australian Federal Police, the Irish Reporting & Information Security Service and the Police Central e-Crime Unit of the London Metropolitan Police, Verizon found that 2011 was the second-highest year for data loss that it has recorded, since it stated the annual investigation in 2004. In all, it analysed 855 data breaches covering 174 million stolen records. → 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 make it easier for people to start their own companies. One such example is the Startup Act, co-authored by Republican Senator Jerry Moran of Kansas and Democratic Senator Mark Warner of Virginia.
TechCrunch TV had the opportunity to sit down with Senator Moran this past weekend at the South By Southwest Interactive conference in Austin, Texas, where he was speaking about the Startup Act and meeting with entrepreneurs from all over the country. We were able to get his insights on what exactly the Startup Act could mean for entrepreneurs, why creating startups is a bipartisan issue, how Silicon Valley should engage with Washington, D.C., and much more. → Read More
Silicon Valley may be a garden of innovation, but many of the seeds were sown by Hollywood. Earlier generations of innovators were inspired by shows such as Star Trek, Lost in Space, and The Jetsons; later generations, by films such as Aliens, Terminator, and Avatar. Hollywood brought science fiction to the masses and gave people big things to dream about. And music spread the inspiration — it was a social network before social networks existed.
These were some of the things we discussed at the Singularity University executive program on the Mulberry Street set at Hollywood’s Fox Studios, last weekend. → Read More
Part of the long-running (and far from over) SOPA/PIPA battle was the drawing of lines in the sand by Internet companies. While most recognized the danger of that irresponsible and short-sighted bill and took action against it, some companies supported it strongly and even testified to that effect in Congress.
GoDaddy was one of those companies, and while it later tried to undo the damage its position had done (the new CEO seems a little more in touch), the Internet isn’t so good at forgetting or forgiving. Among the many, many sites that pledged to leave GoDaddy’s DNS service was Wikipedia, and after three months of work, they’ve finally done so. → 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 the bills. Instead, there needs to be more research and transparent discussion about the broader issues: → Read More
My own views about SOPA and the need to protect online intellectual property are well-known. But even I acknowledge that SOPA was a flawed bill that didn’t represent a viable solution to policing the Internet against intellectual property theft. So is there life after SOPA? How can the technology and content communities carve out a compromise which will simultaneously protect innovation and the rights of the creative community?
In the spirit of compromise, I invited Larry Downes, one of SOPA’s most articulate critics, into our San Francisco studio to talk about what comes next. → Read More
According to filings with the Federal Election Commission, Google spent approximately $390,000 (out of $3,760,000.00 total) on SOPA and PIPA lobbying including efforts to educate lawmakers on SOPA and the DMCA. The question, then, is whether the massive search and advertising giant was for or against the bill – and why so much money was spent to argue the case.
The document, available online in PDF here, is fairly succinct and covers a number of topics, thereby explaining the massive cash outlay. Here’s the specific mention of SOPA:
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Silicon Valley and Hollywood: so close geographically, yet so distant digitally and philosophically. You would think we’d understand each other better. In the Valley, we circulate pitch decks. In Hollywood, they shop around scripts. We strive for exits, while they sell distribution rights. They have record labels, we have venture capitalists. They have agents, we have recruiters. People on Sunset Blvd. obsess over the next “hit” that will draw viewers, ears, or butts in seats. On Sand Hill Road, we toast to market disruptions and business model innovations. Ultimately, both are working towards bringing transformative experiences (content and apps) to market.
Yet for all the apparent ecosystem similarities, our two worlds are surprisingly at odds. Hollywood’s creators and the Valley’s innovators could achieve so much together. Instead, we’re clashing, and neither viewpoint is wrong. → 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 to discuss language that should be included in any future SOPA/PIPA legislation. → 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 Technology defend their respective positions in part II of TCTV’s SOPA/PIPA debate.
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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 and Director of the Center for Democracy And Technology, to debate the issue in the video above. → Read More
Yesterday the Internet the internet cried out in protest of SOPA-PIPA, and congress heard us loud and clear. At the beginning of Janaury 18th, there were 80 members of congress who supported the legislation, and 31 opponents. Now, just 63 support SOPA-PIPA, and opposition has surged to 122, according to ProPublica.
Now lets look at the breakdown by House, Senate, Democrat, and Republican, and see if there’s enough opposition to defeat the bills. Currently there are still enough stated supporters for PIPA to pass in the Senate…
By blacking out the default Firefox start page and using social media, Mozilla reached 40 million people with its anti-SOPA/PIPA message. According to a stats wrap-up just posted to the Mozilla blog, 30 million people in the US saw the start page’s call to action, 1.8 million visited its mozilla.org/SOPA info page, and the effort generated 360,000 emails to Congress.
Here’s how it stacked up against the impact of Google and Wikimedia’s protests: → Read More
You’ve got to feel sorry for the SOPA guys.
They did all the right things. They got legislation introduced that would protect their industry from inconvenient threats — like that pesky Internet. They spent millions on lobbying from their $63m budget. And they even hired a high-profile, well-connected, just-out-of-Congress Senator for the bargain price of a $1.5 million base salary to run their organization. And yet it appears that their support is collapsing and are resorting to a rather pathetic tactic of name-calling in response.
You can’t blame them for being a little shell-shocked. In fact, four years ago, a bill like SOPA would have sailed through Congress, particularly because it’s a media-related issue, the mainstream media would have likely avoided shining a spotlight on the issue. → Read More
Yesterday, as some of the biggest sites on the web ‘blacked out’ in bold protests of the deeply flawed anti-piracy bills SOPA and PIPA, hundreds of protesters took to the streets in several cities across the US to take the fight offline.
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When you hear the words “San Francisco,” there’s a good chance that the word “protest” will also come to mind. Or, if you’re on a different wavelength, “Ron Conway.”
But today, the city’s favorite pasttime and its top angel investor came together at a special appearance in Civic Center Plaza to speak out against SOPA and PIPA, the two slimy “anti-piracy” bills currently worming their ways through through Congress. → Read More
Google generally gets in hot water when it is thought to be abusing its pole position in the search industry. But it’s no use denying that while some moves skirt the edges of abusing monopoly, others are more than welcome. During natural disasters, for instance, Google has provided helpful links and resources for people who want to donate or volunteer. And their logo doodles pay homage to personages and events many people would otherwise have overlooked.
Today must rank among the best applications of their choice placement: a link on the Google homepage and thousands of shares have produced a mind-blowing 4.5 million signatures on their anti-SOPA petition. → 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
San Francisco, CA
