Hackers plan space satellites to combat censorship #SOPA
“Computer hackers plan to take the internet beyond the reach of censors by putting their own communication satellites into orbit.
The scheme was outlined at the Chaos Communication Congress in Berlin.
The project’s organisers said the Hackerspace Global Grid will also involve developing a grid of ground stations to track and communicate with the satellites.
Longer term they hope to help put an amateur astronaut on the moon.
Hobbyists have already put a few small satellites into orbit - usually only for brief periods of time - but tracking the devices has proved difficult for low-budget projects.
The hacker activist Nick Farr first put out calls for people to contribute to the project in August. He said that the increasing threat of internet censorship had motivated the project.
“The first goal is an uncensorable internet in space. Let’s take the internet out of the control of terrestrial entities,” Mr Farr said.”~Read More: BBC
guru:
“This Painting is Not Available in Your Country” by Paul Mutant. Featured in a Budapest exhibition by the artist, which included visualisations of how his work propagated across the internet (see article by Governance Across Borders).
US Government Targets The Pirate Bay, Megaupload and Others #piracy #TPB Via @torrentfreak
“The US Government has classified some of the largest websites on the Internet as examples of sites which sustain global piracy. The list released by the United States Trade Representative draws exclusively on input from rightsholders. It includes popular torrent sites such as The Pirate Bay, file-hosting service Megaupload and Russia’s leading social network VKontakte.
In its second “Out-of-Cycle Review of Notorious Markets”, the United States Trade Representative (USTR) has listed more than a dozen websites and physical markets which are reportedly involved in piracy and counterfeiting.
The list is based solely on input from lobby groups including the RIAA and MPAA, who submitted their recommendations a few weeks ago. While the USTR admits that the list is not meant to reflect legal violations, the websites mentioned in the report “merit further investigation” for their alleged infringing behavior.
“These are marketplaces that have been the subject of enforcement action or that may merit further investigation for possible intellectual property rights infringements. The scale and popularity of these markets can cause economic harm to U.S. and other IP right holders,” the report reads.”~Read More: TorrentFreak
Law Firms Removing Their Name From #SOPA/#PIPA Supporters' List; SOPA 'Support' Crumbling
“So we were just discussing how a bunch of companies who were listed by the US Chamber of Commerce as SOPA/PIPA supporters are demanding to be taken off the list, noting that, while they had agreed to a generic statement about fighting the sale of counterfeit goods, they don’t support crazy broad legislation like SOPA/PIPA. It seems that others listed as “supporting” SOPA are scrambling to get off the list as well. The Judiciary Committee’s official list had included a bunch of big name law firms as being in support of the law as well — which is a little strange, since law firms usually don’t take official positions on things like this. They may express opinions on such matters on behalf of clients, but outright supporting legislation is a different ballgame altogether.
A group of lawyers (most of whom have a long history of working with the entertainment industry) did send a letter to the Judiciary Committee to say that they agreed with Floyd Abrams’ analysis of SOPA. That’s it. They didn’t say their firms supported SOPA — and, in fact, there’s an asterisk with the signatures noting that the names of their firms are solely for identification purposes. Yet the Judiciary Committee took those names anyway and put them on the supporters list. Expressing a legal opinion on a bill is extraordinarily different from supporting the bill. But the Judiciary Committee ignored that and listed them as supporters anyway.”~Read more: TechDirt (Thanks to Epic)
Godaddy no longer supports #SOPA… that was fast. Does this mean the boycott is no longer necessary? ha.
shortformblog:
Good work, Internet: GoDaddy has rescinded their support of SOPA. ”Fighting online piracy is of the utmost importance, which is why GoDaddy has been working to help craft revisions to this legislation - but we can clearly do better,” said Warren Adelman, GoDaddy’s CEO. “It’s very important that all Internet stakeholders work together on this. Getting it right is worth the wait. GoDaddy will support it when and if the Internet community supports it.” The company says it had been working closely with its general counsel, Christine Jones, on hepling to mold and revise the legislation — prior to now.
Dec 29th is “Leave Godaddy Day”, due to their support of SOPA.
Unless Godaddy makes a bold and significant move to reverse their support for SOPA and to powerfully demonstrate their support for Internet freedom, I’ll be moving my approximately 50 domains and dedicated server.
