White House bypasses Senate to ink agreement that could allow Chinese companies to demand ISPs remove web content in US with no legal oversight.

Months before the debate about Internet censorship raged as SOPA and PIPA dominated the concerns of web users, President Obama signed an international treaty that would allow companies in China or any other country in the world to demand ISPs remove web content in the US with no legal oversight whatsoever.

The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement was signed by Obama on October 1 2011, yet is currently the subject of a White House petition demanding Senators be forced to ratify the treaty. The White House has circumvented the necessity to have the treaty confirmed by lawmakers by presenting it an as “executive agreement,” although legal scholars have highlighted the dubious nature of this characterization.

The hacktivist group Anonymousattacked and took offline the Federal Trade Commission’s website yesterday in protest against the treaty, which was also the subject of demonstrations across major cities in Poland, a country set to sign the agreement today.

Under the provisions of ACTA, copyright holders will be granted sweeping direct powers to demand ISPs remove material from the Internet on a whim. Whereas ISPs normally are only forced to remove content after a court order, all legal oversight will be abolished, a precedent that will apply globally, rendering the treaty worse in its potential scope for abuse than SOPA or PIPA.

A country known for its enforcement of harsh Internet censorship policies like China could demand under the treaty that an ISP in the United States remove content or terminate a website on its server altogether. As we have seen from the enforcement of similar copyright policies in the US, websites are sometimes targeted for no justifiable reason.

The groups pushing the treaty also want to empower copyright holders with the ability to demand that users who violate intellectual property rights (with no legal process) have their Internet connections terminated, a punishment that could only ever be properly enforced by the creation of an individual Internet ID card for every web user, a system that is already in the works.

“The same industry rightsholder groups that support the creation of ACTA have also called for mandatory network-level filtering by Internet Service Providers and for Internet Service Providers to terminate citizens’ Internet connection on repeat allegation of copyright infringement (the “Three Strikes” /Graduated Response) so there is reason to believe that ACTA will seek to increase intermediary liability and require these things of Internet Service Providers,” reports the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

The treaty will also mandate that ISPs disclose personal user information to the copyright holder, while providing authorities across the globe with broader powers to search laptops and Internet-capable devices at border checkpoints.

In presenting ACTA as an “international agreement” rather than a treaty, the Obama administration managed to circumvent the legislative process and avoid having to get Senate approval, amethod questioned by Senator Wyden.

“That said, even if Obama has declared ACTA an executive agreement (while those in Europe insist that it’s a binding treaty), there is a very real Constitutional question here: can it actually be an executive agreement?” asks TechDirt. “The law is clear that the only things that can be covered by executive agreements are things that involve items that are solely under the President’s mandate. That is, you can’t sign an executive agreement that impacts the things Congress has control over. But here’s the thing: intellectual property, in Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution, is an issue given to Congress, not the President. Thus, there’s a pretty strong argument that the president legally cannot sign any intellectual property agreements as an executive agreement and, instead, must submit them to the Senate.”.

26 European Union member states along with the EU itself are set to sign the treaty at a ceremony today in Tokyo. Other countries wishing to sign the agreement have until May 2013 to do so.

Critics are urging those concerned about Obama’s decision to sign the document with no legislative oversight to demand the Senate be forced to ratify the treaty.

*********************

Paul Joseph Watson is the editor and writer for Prison Planet.com. He is the author of Order Out Of Chaos. Watson is also a regular fill-in host for The Alex Jones Show and Infowars Nightly News.

Source: Prison Planet.

SOPA and PIPA are threat to free speech.

Kentucky Republican Senator Rand Paul has promised to do everything within his power to ensure the draconian Protect IP Act (PIPA) and the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) are not brought to a vote.

Paul says he will filibuster PIPA in the Senate owing to the fact that the bill is a direct threat to the First Amendment.

“Both PIPA and SOPA give the federal government unprecedented and unconstitutional power to censor the Internet,” Paul said in a statement. “These bills enable the government to shut down websites that it deems guilty of violating copyright laws.”

Paul continued: “While we support copyright protections, we are also concerned about websites being shut down without their day in court, and making innocent third parties bear the costs of solving someone else’s problems.

“I will not sit idly by while PIPA and SOPA eliminate the constitutionally protected rights to due process and free speech. For these reasons, I have pledged to oppose, filibuster and do everything in my power to stop government censorship of the Internet,” Paul said.

As we have documented, SOPA and PIPA are bills essentially written by powerful lobbyists for the entertainment industry. They do not effectively stop real piracy, rather they target websites, giving the government the power to seize any site of its choosing and take it offline should the site be deemed to be infringing copyright.

What actually constitutes infringement of copyright according the the legislation, however, is so broad that a site could be targeted merely for displaying a hyper link.

Rob Beschizza, the managing editor of Boing Boing.net, a popular blog, explains futher:

Following an internet wide protest against the legislation yesterday, several lawmakers havedefected and dropped their support for SOPA and PIPA.

A test vote is scheduled in the Senate for next Tuesday, the House will address the legislation sometime in February.

——————————————————————

Steve Watson is the London based writer and editor for Alex Jones’ Infowars.net, andPrisonplanet.com. He has a Masters Degree in International Relations from the School of Politics at The University of Nottingham in England.

Source: Infowars.

*Written by Rob Rimes.

Today is a great day for liberty. As I write this it is January 18^th, 2012 and the Internet is ablaze with anger towards SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) and PIPA (Protect IP Act). Not only was The Swash down in protest of these dastardly bills but Internet giants Wikipedia and Reddit were down as well. Shit, even Google participated in this blackout with a unique graphic on their page that lead to information about these two horrible laws and what you can do to fight them.

I was more than ecstatic today when I signed into my Facebook account and was overwhelmed by all the people who blacked out their own photos and had status updates and links protesting SOPA and PIPA plastered all over the home page. The impact of this protest is literally reaching further than any other online protest I’ve ever witnessed or been a part of. In fact, in just a few short hours, the tide has turned and the pimps pushing this law are now starting to run like the two-faced pandering bastards they are. I guess when you shine a little light the cockroaches scatter.

One of my favorite punching bags, Marco Rubio – the Republican senator form my home state of Florida, was a co-sponsor on one of these evil bills but he has now come out against it. This is because Rubio is a dickbag, a panderer and a wolf in Tea Party clothing. This “noble” act doesn’t excuse the fact that he co-sponsored PIPA and was also a champion for the insanely tyrannical NDAA bill, which just passed recently. Don’t get excited and let Rubio fool you, when this dies down, he’ll help reintroduce the bill with a few modifications and continue on his fascist path.

Conservative darling Paul Ryan just wrote this status update on his Facebook:

The Internet is one of the most magnificent expressions of freedom and free enterprise in history. It should stay that way. While H.R. 3261, the Stop Online Piracy Act, attempts to address a legitimate problem, I believe it creates the precedent and possibility for undue regulation, censorship and legal abuse. I do not support H.R. 3261 in its current form and will oppose the legislation should it come before the full House.

While that sounds all fine and dandy, Mr. Ryan doesn’t fully oppose the idea of the bill and chances are, if it was tweaked and the opposition towards it died down, he may just very well vote for it.

Senators Jim DeMint, Robert Menendez and others have come out against this tyranny. Another co-sponsor, Arizona congressman Ben Quayle has withdrawn his support. Freedom fighter and libertarian leaning Michigan congressman Justin Amash continues to speak out against this, as does Kentucky senator Rand Paul and his father, Texas congressman and presidential candidate Ron Paul.

The opposition to these bills has grown so quickly in the last several hours that six Republican senators wrote a letter to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. The letter states:

We have increasingly heard from a large number of constituents and other stakeholders with vocal concerns about possible unintended consequences of the proposed legislation, including breaches in cybersecurity, damaging the integrity of the Internet, costly and burdensome litigation, and dilution of First Amendment rights.

For those of you who have been in the dark, I’ll break down what these bills are. In a nutshell, what they are supposed to do is to protect copyrighted material and eliminate piracy. What they actually do is a different story.

Basically, these bills give the entertainment industry the power to censor the Internet and breed a whole new type of crony capitalism while forcing us into a digital police state. You see, private corporations want to be able to choose what can and cannot be censored on the Internet. These corporations are trying to protect their property, which is understandable, and since the Internet is a bastion for downloading music and movies, they want to be able to tighten their grip and control how the whole system works. Considering that many of the sources for this copyrighted material exists outside of United States jurisdiction, these laws are being put in place to give the government and their corporate buddies an easier way at stopping copyright infringement. Again, that is understandable but the methods about doing this are just awful.

The first thing that this does is it gives the power to United States based ISPs (Internet Service Providers) to have special access at blocking infringing domain names. This also gives companies the power to sue websites, bloggers or whoever until they remove links or information directing Internet users to anything that they deem as infringed upon property.

Secondly, the government and their corporate pals would also be given the power to cut off funds to any websites that they believe are infringing on copyrights. Essentially, they can forcibly cancel infringing websites accounts with financial services and advertisers.

Now even though this all may seem somewhat proactive, one has to look at what actually constitutes copyright infringement. The description that they provide is so broad that if you technically upload a video to YouTube and there happens to be a piece of a song playing in the background, even if it’s just on the radio while you’re talking to the camera unaware of it, you have just infringed on copyrighted material and could face some serious penalties. This is just a small example but think of all the things you come across on the Internet on a daily basis that could technically be considered as copyright infringement. Violations are pretty much fucking everywhere! Hell, the whole Internet is a violation!

Besides all that, if there is a will there is a way. These laws won’t stop Internet users from finding music and movies to download illegally. In fact, even if a URL is blocked, an Internet user can still access the site via its IP address. Hell, this might start a revolution in web browsing and millions of digital pirates will be navigating the Net with IPs as opposed to typical URLs.

Another thing to mention is that these laws are incredibly bad for business. Essentially, they will cripple and stifle startups as corporations will have the power to sue any company that they feel isn’t properly protecting their interests. In a classic case of crony capitalism or corporatism, this allows the giants to stay on top, where they can look down and crush any growing company that may become a viable competitor for their business. Basically, these bills will create and perpetuate monopolies. When large corporations have the power to bankrupt new search engines and social networking sites, there really isn’t room for growth or innovation. We might as well just go back to the days of dark dingy uninspiring chat rooms.

The scariest thing that these laws will do is tamper with the Internet as a whole from the backend. By messing around with the Internet’s vast registry of domain names we could very well end up with a World Wide Web that is less stable and less secure. At the end of the day, these laws won’t stop piracy, as they claim and they will just create an environment for a new type of corporatism while leaving the Internet less secure and less reliable than it has ever been.

The Internet has already become a playground for government and corporate meddling. Hell, they already have laws in place to protect copyright infringement yet they want to push the envelope as far as they can. As of right now, the government and corporations already have the power to block any site just off of one infringing link. Social media giants like Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, YouTube and others are now forced to censor their users because if they don’t, they become liable for the material their users upload and could be forced to shut down. On top of that, an ordinary Internet user could already be sentenced to prison for up to five years just for posting any copyrighted material – this includes someone like Tay Zonday who became an Internet sensation for singing pop song covers.

This situation is incredibly fucked up and it is just one more battle in a long line or tyrannous laws that the government is trying to impose on us. Just add this ingredient to the same bowl of tyranny punch that already consists of the PATRIOT Act, NDAA, indefinite detention, Homeland Security, the TSA, previous Internet censorship, FEMA, etc. The list goes on and on and hopefully people’s distrust in government has grown to the point that all future legislation the tyrants bring forth will be scrutinized and passionately opposed as much as SOPA and PIPA.

In the end, we’ve got to chain these bastards’ feet to the grill and turn up the fire until they do what we say because frankly, that’s their damn job.

Many experts have said that the Stop Online Privacy Act (SOPA) and Protect IP Act (PIPA) are not only draconian, but that they fail to address the root problem.

A former intellectual property law school professor points out:

[SOPA and PIPA] aim to curb online copyright piracy … but end up using a sledgehammer, when a fine scalpel is instead needed.

***

As reported by Forbes, the Atlantic Monthly and others, coders are already developing work-arounds to SOPA and PIPA. For example, a developer using the alias “Tamer Rizk” launched DeSopa, an add-on for the popular Firefox browser that would allow users to visit sites blocked by the proposed copyright protection measures proposed under SOPA. So not only these bills are not only draconian, but they won’t work.

Jay McDaniel – a plaintiff’s attorney for content providers fighting torrent–based copyright infringement – agrees, and  proposes a better alternative:

There is a simple solution to the dilemma of digital piracy, however, one that will cost the government nothing, that will protect free speech and that will ultimately bring an end to a practice that is undermining the viability of our cultural industries. More importantly, it will enable Congress to avoid polluting legitimate free speech issues with behavior that is neither protected by the Constitution nor lawful.

Simply let copyright holders exercise the right to efficiently discover the identity of infringers. Copyright law as it presently exists with its substantial civil remedies will take care of the rest of the problem.

***

The answer is simple. Congress should overrule two decisions that held that copyright owners could not use the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA) to subpoena the identities of infringers directly from cable internet service providers. These two decisions, Recording Indus. Ass’n of America v. Verizon Internet Servs., Inc., 351 F.3d 1299 (D.C. Cir. 2003) and In re Charter Communications, Inc., 393 F.3d 771 (8th Cir. 2005), have made it extremely difficult for copyright owners to find and prosecute civil claims against the wide-spread piracy that occurs on peer-to-peer networks.

Both cases involved attempts by copyright owners to use a provision in the DMCA that allows the owners to issue takedown notices to Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and to also obtain a subpoena to learn the identity of the infringer. The Verizon and Charter Communications courts held that the takedown notice-subpoena provisions did not apply to claims seeking to discover the identity of Internet account holders.

It was a strained reading of the statute to begin with, and it has led to a morass of litigation and discovery disputes in which there are conflicting jurisdictional and venue decisions on a nearly daily basis. More significantly these decisions closed the courthouse doors to any copyright holder that cannot demonstrate widespread copying sufficient to justify bringing a large “John Doe” action just to find out who the culprits are. Moreover, in a relatively small number of cases, hostile district judges are unwilling to let the cases go forward in any reasonably economic manner.

***

Copyright holders know that their works are being pirated. They know where they are being pirated and how they are being pirated. But they simply cannot get to the pirates. If Congress were to overrule these decisions, the problem would disappear as the people who break the law would find themselves facing the serious consequences of a civil infringement suit. The infringers would pay for the remedy through statutory fee shifting.

Private enforcement litigation would replace the need for government oversight of our Internet habits, and those who break the law would fund the system. Digital piracy, in its present form, would quickly come to a halt for the same reason that we don’t shoplift copies of DVDs from Walmart. It’s too easy to get caught and the penalties are too severe.

As Harvard law school professor Lawrence Tribe correctly points out to Congress:

[SOPA] creates confusion and underscores the need to go back to the drawing board and craft a new measure that works as a scalpel rather than a sledgehammer to address the governmental interests that SOPA purports to advance.

Many Copyright Lawyers Oppose SOPA

Indeed, many of the nation’s top copyright lawyers oppose SOPA and PIPA, including:

1. Marvin Ammori, Affiliate Scholar, Center for Internet & Society, Stanford Law School
2. Brook K. Baker, Northeastern University School of Law
3. Stewart Baker, former NSA General Counsel and Head of Cyber Policy for DHS
4. Derek E. Bambauer, Brooklyn Law School
5. Margreth Barrett, Hastings College of Law University of California-San Francisco
6. Mark Bartholomew, University at Buffalo Law School
7. Ann M. Bartow, Pace Law School
8. Marsha Baum, University of New Mexico School of Law
9. Yochai Benkler, Harvard Law School
10. Oren Bracha, University of Texas School of Law
11. Annemarie Bridy, University of Idaho College of Law
12. Chris Bronk, Rice University
13. Dan L. Burk, University of California-Irvine School of Law
14. Irene Calboli, Marquette University School of Law
15. Adam Candeub, Michigan State University College of Law
16. Michael Carrier, Rutgers Law School – Camden
17. Michael W. Carroll, Washington College of Law American University
18. Brian W. Carver, School of Information University of California-Berkeley
19. Anupam Chander, University of California-Davis School of Law
20. Andrew Chin, University of North Carolina School of Law
21. Ralph D. Clifford, University of Massachusetts School of Law
22. Julie E. Cohen, Georgetown University Law Center
23. G. Marcus Cole, Stanford Law School
24. Kevin Collins, Washington University-St. Louis School of Law
25. Danielle M. Conway, University of Hawai’i Richardson School of Law
26. Dennis S. Corgill, St. Thomas University School of Law
27. Christopher A. Cotropia, University of Richmond School of Law
28. Thomas Cotter, University of Minnesota School of Law
29. Julie Cromer Young, Thomas Jefferson School of Law
30. Ben Depoorter, Hastings College of Law University of California – San Francisco
31. Eric B. Easton, University of Baltimore School of Law
32. Anthony Falzone Director, Fair Use Project Stanford Law School
33. Nita Farahany, Vanderbilt Law School
34. Thomas G. Field, Jr., University of New Hampshire School of Law
35. Sean Flynn, Washington College of Law American University
36. Brett M. Frischmann, Cardozo Law School Yeshiva University
37. Jeanne C. Fromer, Fordham Law School
38. William T. Gallagher, Golden Gate University School of Law
39. Laura N. Gasaway, University of North Carolina School of Law
40. Deborah Gerhardt, University of North Carolina School of Law
41. Llew Gibbons, University of Toledo College of Law
42. Eric Goldman, Santa Clara University School of Law
43. Marc Greenberg, Golden Gate University School of Law
44. James Grimmelman, New York Law School
45. Leah Chan Grinvald, St. Louis University School of Law
46. Richard Gruner, John Marshall Law School
47. Robert A. Heverly, Albany Law School Union University
48. Laura A. Heymann, Marshall-Wythe School of Law College of William & Mary
49. Herbert Hovenkamp, University of Iowa College of Law
50. Dan Hunter, New York Law School
51. David R. Johnson, New York Law School
52. Faye E. Jones, Florida State University College of Law
53. Amy Kapczynski, University of California-Berkeley Law School
54. Dennis S. Karjala, Arizona State University College of Law
55. Anne Klinefelter, University of North Carolina College of Law
56. Mary LaFrance, William Boyd Law School University of Nevada – Las Vegas
57. Amy L. Landers, McGeorge Law School University of the Pacific
58. Mark Lemley, Stanford Law School
59. Lawrence Lessig, Harvard Law School
60. David S. Levine, Elon University School of Law
61. Yvette Joy Liebesman, St. Louis University School of Law
62. Peter Linzer, University of Houston Law Center
63. Lydia Pallas Loren, Lewis & Clark Law School
64. Michael J. Madison, University of Pittsburgh School of Law
65. Gregory P. Magarian, Washington University-St. Louis School of Law
66. Phil Malone, Harvard Law School
67. Christian E. Mammen, Hastings College of Law University of California-San Francisco
68. Jonathan Masur, University of Chicago Law School
69. Andrea Matwyshyn, Wharton School of Business University of Pennsylvania
70. J. Thomas McCarthy, University of San Francisco School of Law
71. Aleecia M. McDonald, Stanford University
72. William McGeveran, University of Minnesota Law School
73. Stephen McJohn, Suffolk University Law School
74. Mark P. McKenna, Notre Dame Law School
75. Hiram Melendez-Juarbe, University of Puerto Rico School of Law
76. Viva Moffat, University of Denver College of Law
77. Ira Nathenson, St. Thomas University School of Law
78. Tyler T. Ochoa, Santa Clara University School of Law
79. David S. Olson, Boston College Law School
80. Barak Y. Orbach, University of Arizona College of Law
81. Kristen Osenga, University of Richmond School of Law
82. Frank Pasquale, Seton Hall Law School
83. Aaron Perzanowski, Wayne State University Law School
84. Malla Pollack Co-author, Callman on Trademarks, Unfair Competition, and Monopolies
85. David G. Post, Temple University School of Law
86. Connie Davis Powell, Baylor University School of Law
87. Margaret Jane Radin, University of Michigan Law School
88. Glenn Reynolds, University of Tennessee Law School
89. David A. Rice, Roger Williams University School of Law
90. Neil Richards, Washington University-St. Louis School of Law
91. Michael Risch, Villanova Law School
92. Betsy Rosenblatt, Whittier Law School
93. Matthew Sag, Loyola University-Chicago School of Law
94. Pamela Samuelson, University of California-Berkeley Law School
95. Sharon K. Sandeen, Hamline University School of Law
96. Jason M. Schultz, UC Berkeley Law School
97. Jeremy Sheff, St. John’s University School of Law
98. Jessica Silbey, Suffolk University Law School
99. Brenda M. Simon, Thomas Jefferson School of Law
100. David E. Sorkin, John Marshall Law School
101. Christopher Jon Sprigman, University of Virginia School of Law
102. Katherine J. Strandburg, NYU Law School
103. Madhavi Sunder, University of California-Davis School of Law
104. Rebecca Tushnet, Georgetown University Law Center
105. Deborah Tussey, Oklahoma City University School of Law
106. Barbara van Schewick, Stanford Law School
107. Eugene Volokh, UCLA School of Law
108. Sarah K. Wiant, William & Mary Law School
109. Darryl C. Wilson, Stetson University College of Law
110. Jane K. Winn, University of Washington School of Law
111. Peter K. Yu, Drake University Law School
112. Tim Zick, William & Mary Law

For further background on the internet copyright bills, see:

• The Tide Is Turning Against SOPA … And We Might Actually Succeed In Stopping It

• SOPA Is “Unconstitutional”, Would “Criminalize” the Internet … Modeled On China

• Job Creators, Internet Architects and Security Experts Hate SOPA

• Sopa Would DESTROY Jobs and the Economy … So Why are Unions Supporting It?

• Hypocrite Alert: SOPA Supporters Encouraged People to Use File-Sharing Software for Pirating Copyrighted Material

The conservative and liberal blogospheres are unifying behind opposition to Congress’s Stop Online Piracy Act, with right-leaning bloggers arguing their very existence could be wiped out if the anti-piracy bill passes.

“If either the U.S. Senate’s Protect IP Act (PIPA) & the U.S. House’s Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) become law, political blogs such as Red Mass Group [conservative] & Blue Mass Group [liberal] will cease to exist,” wrote a blogger at Red Mass Group.

Some have asserted that the controversial measures would criminalize pages and blogs that link to foreign websites dedicated to online piracy. In particular, this has concerned search engines like Google, which could face massive liability if some form of the bill passes, some say.

“Of course, restrictions of results provided by Internet search engines amount to just that: prior restraint of their free expression of future results. Google and others, under SOPA, are told what they can or can’t publish before they publish it. Kill. The. Bill,” conservative blogger Neil Stevens argued at RedState.

Liberals had their own spin on it, cheering on the fact that corporate support for SOPA was starting to subside.

CONTINUED at Politico.

While a short week ago the Internet censorship bill – SOPA – looked certain to pass, the tide appears to be quickly turning.

Politico notes today:

The conservative and liberal blogospheres are unifying behind opposition to Congress’s Stop Online Piracy Act, with right-leaning bloggers arguing their very existence could be wiped out if the anti-piracy bill passes.

“If either the U.S. Senate’s Protect IP Act (PIPA) & the U.S. House’s Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) become law, political blogs such as Red Mass Group [conservative] & Blue Mass Group [liberal] will cease to exist,” wrote a blogger at Red Mass Group.

***

“Some good news on the SOPA front: Its corporate base of supporters is starting to crumble,” David Dayden wrote at Firedoglake. “GoDaddy is not alone. Scores of law firms are requesting their names be removed from the Judiciary Committee’s official list of SOPA supporters.”

In the blogosphere, the trajectory of the bill seemed set — that it is destined for failure if the pressure of the online community is kept up.

“The dynamic is clear. Once SOPA — and its Senate counterpart, Protecting IP Act, or PIPA — became high-profile among the Internet community, the lazy endorsements from companies and various hangers-on became toxic. And now, those supporters are scrambling, hollowing out the actual support for the bill. Suddenly, a bill with ‘widespread’ corporate support doesn’t have much support at all,” Dayden said.

Conservatives took a slightly different tact, though with similar disdain for the anti-piracy measures.

Indeed, blogger Erick Erickson said that he would encourage a primary for any Republican who supports the bill.

“I love Marsha Blackburn. She is a delightful lady and a solidly conservative member of Congress. And I am pledging right now that I will do everything in my power to defeat her in her 2012 reelection bid” due to her co-sponsorship for SOPA, Erickson wrote atRedState. “Congress has proven it does not understand the Internet. Perhaps they will understand brute strength against them at the ballot box. If members of Congress do not pull their name from co-sponsorship of SOPA, the left and right should pledge to defeat each and every one of them.”

Digital Journal reports:

The legislation, which many are suggesting is nothing less than censorship of Internet content and an assault on free speech, has brought many disparate groups together for the first time, such as … the Heritage Foundation and Beregrond, a Libertarian website.

***

Several Washington D.C. law firms and lobbying groups were added to a list of corporate supporters by mistake and those who were willing to speak on the record were decidedly unhappy with the House Judiciary Committee. “It’s just incorrect. The firm has no position on SOPA,” Davis Wright Tremaine LLP spokesman Mark Usellis stated toPolitico.

Even the White House is looking toward opposing the bill, with a petition on the White House website to veto the bill if passed by Congress. The petition needed 25,000 signatures and so far it has 43,351.

Time to redouble our efforts … the tide may be turning, and we have a chance of winning.

Source: Washington’s Blog.

I readily admit that I am a sucker for glam (or hair) metal to supplement my voluminous consumption of heavy metal. Unfortunately, the heyday of glam metal is long gone and what remains of this proud musical genre is the occasional but temporary reunion of long-since-retired band members for another last gig or tour. While the genre saw something of a revival (or nostalgia) in the past decade, whatever was accomplished is far from the good old days.

Yet this is not the impression one gets from visiting online stores such as Amazon.com. I recently did so in a quest to increase my collection of glam-metal albums on my hard drive, and what I found was a strange phenomenon: many of the great old albums sell at very high prices. Not only that, but they sell at substantially higher prices if one chooses to download the files than if one orders the physical CDs.

For instance, Warrant’s well-known album Dirty Rotten Filthy Stinking Rich (1984), with smash hits like “Heaven,” sells for $10.99 for download and $8.99 for CD. And Skid Row’s self-entitled album (1989), with a bunch of smash hits including “18 and Life” and “I Remember You,” costs $9.99 to download and $5.86 for the CD — and the CD comes with a $1.00 credit for future music downloads! These are only a couple of examples, but clicking through Amazon’s website reveals plenty more. In fact, this seems to be a pretty “normal” pricing scheme.

Of course, as Austrians we realize that the cost of production means nothing for the price at which products are offered to consumers. It is the other way around: the value to consumers decides the possible prices at which entrepreneurs can sell products — and this in turn decides what costs can be assumed in order to produce them. So maybe consumers value MP3 downloads much higher than having the physical CD delivered (even though they can instantly rip the CD). And to producers, the cost of producing the CDs is sunk and should mean little to nothing to their pricing strategies. What does matter, however, is the cost of storage, which is pretty much nothing for downloadable music.

So perhaps the pricing strategies are not as far off as they seem?

No. Comparing the prices of music produced in the 1980s and early 1990s with more recent music reveals a pricing mystery. Take the music by a modern phenomenon like Lady Gaga as an example. Physical Lady Gaga CDs sell for about as much as the same music downloadable. Sometimes the CDs are a little more costly. And a downloadable Lady Gaga album generally sells for as much as a downloadable Warrant or Skid Row album.

What is wrong with this picture? It is hardly the case that there is collector’s value to purchasing a Warrant CD (which by the way is remastered — it was originally released on vinyl!) as may be the case for vintage wine or old automobiles. (And I refuse to think that Lady Gaga is somehow better music than glam rock — that’s just a preposterous thought!)

There is, I believe, a fundamental error in making this comparison. We are treating postmarket sales of Warrant and Skid Row albums as if they are substitutes for the newly produced easy pop of Lady Gaga. But the fact is that they are hardly substitutes, even if we disregard that they are different types of music.

CONTINUED at the Ludwig von Mises Institute. Written by Per Bylund.

Remember that guy who uploaded the unfinished copy of X-MEN ORIGINS: WOLVERINE? Well, they’ve finally handed him his punishment.

The pirate in question, Gilberto Sanchez admitted back in 2009 that he bought the film on a street corner near his home in the Bronx. In March, Sanchez plead guilty to one count of uploading a copyrighted work being prepared for commercial distribution. He went on to state that he spread the file to Megaupload.com and various other sites. In the prosecutors statements, they spoke of the “damage” that was done in such a short amount of time, “Although Fox was able to get defendant’s Wolverine workprint removed from his Megaupload account within approximately one day, by then, the damage was done and the film had proliferated like wildfire throughout the Internet, resulting in up to millions of infringements.”

Sanchez was sentenced to one year in federal prison by sentenced by U.S. District Judge Margaret Morrow, who described his actions as “extremely serious.”

United States Attorney André Birotte Jr. sees this as a warning to all the pirates out there, “The federal prison sentence handed down in this case sends a strong message of deterrence to would-be Internet pirates. The Justice Department will pursue and prosecute persons who seek to steal the intellectual property of this nation.”

Source: JoBlo.

The U.S. Senate will debate a controversial Hollywood-backed copyright bill as soon as senators return in January.

A vote on the Protect IP Act, a close cousin of the Stop Online Piracy Act, or SOPA, will be held January 24, thanks to a last-minute push by Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) over the weekend.

“This is a bipartisan piece of legislation which is extremely important,” Reid said Saturday. “I repeat, it is bipartisan. I hope we can have a productive couple of days, pass this bill, and move on to other matters.”

Both Protect IP and SOPA have earned the enmity of Silicon Valley companies, Internet engineers, venture capitalists, civil libertarians, and a growing number of Internet users (PDF) because of the methods they use to make suspected piratical Web sites virtually disappear from the Internet. Harvard Law professor Laurence Tribe, author of the treatise American Constitutional Law, says this approach violates the First Amendment.

On Saturday, as the Senate was preparing to adjourn until 2012, Reid proposed that the initial debate on Protect IP would take place at 2:15 p.m. ET on January 24, one day after senators return from the holidays.

“I am pleased the majority leader has filed a motion to proceed to the Protect IP Act,” Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), Protect IP’s author, said afterward. “The costs of online infringement are American jobs, harm to America’s economy, and very real threats to consumers’ safety. The answer cannot simply be to do nothing.”

In the House of Representatives, allies of the Motion Picture Association of America and the Recording Association of America also are moving with dispatch. Even though the House is likely not to be in session then, SOPA author Lamar Smith (R-Tex.) has scheduled a vote on the legislation and related amendments for Wednesday, just in case.

CONTINUED at c|net.

*Taken from Prison Planet. Written by Paul Joseph Watson.

New legislation that would give the US government the power to seize website domains on a whim with no oversight merely for linking to sites that host copyrighted material has been labeled a hallmark of “repressive regimes” by a group of law professors who warn that the bill allows the state to “break the Internet addressing system”.

The Protect IP bill, currently stalled in the Senate, represents a death blow to Internet freedom of speech. It would turn the entire web into a clone of the YouTube model, which routinely censors and deletes material when requested to by governments or corporations and shuts down user channels without recourse.

The legislation merely codifies what Homeland Security is already practicing, seizing and shutting down websites without any form of legal proceedings and in many cases not even notifying the owner.

In an open letter penned by Professor Mark Lemley of Stanford University, David S. Levine of Elon University and David G. Post of Temple University, they warn that the bill would require Internet hosting companies and search engines to de-list entire websites on the basis of a mere copyright claim by a copyright holder, with no independent or legal process undertaken.

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