You probably remember the online outrage over the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) copyright enforcement proposal. Last week, the Department of Commerce’s Internet Policy Task Force released a report on digital copyright policy that endorsed one piece of the controversial proposal: making the streaming of copyrighted works a felony. As it stands now, streaming a copyrighted work over the Internet is considered a violation of the public performance right. The violation is only punishable as a misdemeanor, rather than the […]

I have been taking advantage of my Tumblr account and my Pinterest account, kind of a neat little site. Also in the middle of getting my own hosting business going, Paradise Web Service. Site is not really up and running yet, I am slowly transferring current clients over to it (hope it works out well). WHMCS seems to be helping, and I am digging the new software. Also been using my new BTGuard account to try out my torrents. Had some […]

I know people who do it. You probably know people who do it. And we’re not talking about falling in love. File sharing, the euphemism for copying and sharing copyrighted material without paying, was one of the early hallmarks of the digital, anything-goes-on-the-Internet age. Names like Napster became synonymous with killing the music industry. And there were countless lawsuits against groups and individuals aimed at curbing illegal sharing — but nothing seemed to work. Now, […]

CISPA, the Privacy-Invading Cybersecurity Spying Bill, is Back in Congress It’s official: The Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act was reintroduced in the House of Representatives yesterday. CISPA is the contentious bill civil liberties advocates fought last year, which would provide a poorly-defined “cybersecurity” exception to existing privacy law. CISPA offers broad immunities to companies who choose to share data with government agencies (including the private communications of users) in the name of cybersecurity. It […]

Twitter says it turns over user data to government agencies in the U.S. in 69 percent of the requests made for such information, according to a new transparency report released by the microblogging site. “It’s our continued hope that providing greater insights into this information helps in at least two ways: first, to raise public awareness about these invasive requests; second, to enable policy makers to make more informed decisions,” writes Jeremy Kessel, Twitter’s manager of […]

Since his suicide, friends and admirers have cast free-information activist Aaron Swartz as a martyred hero hounded to his death by the government he antagonized. One newspaper columnist — whose piece on Swartz was accompanied by a photo showing him at his computer, his head encircled by a golden halo — even compared him to an Internet-age Martin Luther King Jr. But those closest to the 26-year-old Swartz say the hacker prodigy wasn’t out to […]

To the people of the Internet who knew his work, he was an “enormous intellect,” a “brilliant and determined spirit” and a “hero of the open net.” To federal prosecutors, he was a criminal. The suicide of Internet activist Aaron Swartz continued to send shock waves Monday throu Swartz, a digital prodigy who helped develop social-news site Reddit and RSS, the technology that allows websites to send updates to subscribers, was found hanged Friday in his […]

Envoys in Dubai signed a new U.N. telecommunications treaty Friday that a U.S.-led delegation says endorses greater government control of the Internet. The U.S. and more than 20 other countries refused to ratify the accord by the 193-nation International Telecommunications Union. Here is a look at Internet restrictions and availability at selected countries and regions around the world: —NORTH KOREA Internet use is extremely restricted with many of North Korea’s 24 million people unable to […]

A UN agency is trying to calm fears that the internet could be damaged by a conference it is hosting. Government regulators from 193 countries are in Dubai to revise a wide-ranging communications treaty. Google has warned the event threatened the “open internet”, while the EU said the current system worked, adding: “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” But the agency said action was needed to ensure investment in infrastructure to help more people access the […]