Today, Google announced a new initiative to support an open and free Internet called “Take Action.” The company has set up a website with materials to help educate you on what your rights are and what changes with laws could do to impact the freedoms you enjoy today on the Internet.
After we went through what we did with SOPA, it’s time to listen up so we don’t have to react like that so… → Read More
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
Editor’s note: U.S. Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D), a senior member of the House Judiciary Committee, represents California’s 16th Congressional District, which includes parts of Silicon Valley and San Jose in Santa Clara County.
It was nearly a year ago that the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) was introduced by Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX). Millions would raise their voices to successfully oppose this… → 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
I’m going to get a lot of hate mail for this article, but it’s a fact that Mitt Romney’s Vice Presidential pick, Paul Ryan, has mostly been a friend to Silicon Valley and the technology industry. Ryan’s voting record has supported better access to high skilled immigrants, an open Internet, crowdfunding for startups, and intellectual property reform. However, his ambiguous stance on net neutrality… → 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
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 … → 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… → 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
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 —… → 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… → 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
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… → 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… → Read More
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… → 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
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… → Read More
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… → 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… → 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. → Read More
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… → 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… → 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
Hundreds of websites (TechCrunch included) have gone dark or visibly changed their appearance as a protest against the Stop Online Privacy Act and its Senate doppelganger, the PROTECT IP Act. It’s a powerful statement and many are saying that it is already producing effects: Senators are changing positions, awareness is rising, and the opposition is becoming a dinner-table topic.
But is this… → Read More
Regardless of where you stand on the SOPA battle, you’ve got to agree: seeing what seems to be the entire Internet come together to stand against something is incredible. Each company has a different approach, but their goal is the same: make sure everyone goes to sleep knowing what SOPA is.
While I don’t want to turn today’s protests into a who-did-it-best battle (that’s not at all the point)… → 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
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