Special Edition: What is CISPA?

Today Congress passed bill H.R. 3523, even while President Obama has promised to veto it. Being called the "Son-of-SOPA," H.R. 3523 is the new-big-and-scary-Internet-bill. H.R. 3523, AKA the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA for short) is remarkably like SOPA, but has some key differences.


While both bills would negatively affect the Internet and America's culture as a whole, CISPA focuses more on personal information and your ISP (Internet Service Provider). In short, the bill would allow your ISP (the company you pay to access the Internet) to monitor everything you do on the Internet, without your knowing, consent, or court order. Why would they do that? The bill says it would be to look for "potential threats" it would then report to the government. One of the criticisms of this is that the language is vague in what it is considered a threat. Another is that it would mean that everything you do, every blog you read, every email you read or send, every Facebook post, every picture on the Internet will be monitored and scanned to see if it mentions any trigger words.

Once your ISP knows what you're doing online, they can then share that information- including all your personal information as well like your name and address with other ISPs and the government. There is no way to opt out of this, and the ISPs will be granted immunity from privacy lawsuits. This law will supersede any and all privacy agreements you make with the ISP or any websites you visit.

Practical Tip of the Day:
Even though the bill has passed the House, it still has to pass the Senate and not be veto'ed by the President. You can find your elected officials by your zip code on this website, and can contact them in whichever means is most convenient for you. You can also see how your representative voted on this webpage.

Special Edition: What is ACTA?

When I checked Twitter this morning I was overwhelmed with all the messages about ACTA protests around Europe today. Especially since most of these countries are experiencing record snow fall this year, it makes you wonder what in the world could bring out thousands in Berlin, Amsterdam, and London just to name a few major cities. So, without further ado, what is ACTA?

ACTA stands for the "Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement" and is an international trade agreement between the US, EU, Japan, Canada, Australia, Mexico and several other countries. The intention of the agreement is to help crack down on international copyright infringement and counterfeited goods. We've all seen counterfeit designer hand bags and illegal "generic" versions of medicine (the primary target of this agreement), but while this agreement hopes to taper if not end that, it would also have wide-reaching effects on the Internet as well.

If this sounds at all familiar, you might be remembering the recent protests about SOPA/PIPA. ACTA will have all the things bad about those, some even worse things, and put them on an international scale. (Click here for a refresher on SOPA/PIPA) It would additionally hold your Internet service provider (ISP) responsible for your actions on the Internet as it pertains to copyright infringement. Critics of the agreement make the point that if this becomes the case it will encourage ISPs to watch what you do on the Internet ala "Big Brother".

It would also make it extremely difficult to give things away for free on the Internet anymore. If someone makes something, let's say a web browser like the one you're using to read this right now, and they try to give it away for free on the Internet, their ISP will be forbidden from hosting it (hosting means letting it reside on a website they have) because it could access copyrighted material. Yes, if you make something that can see, touch, show or in any way access anything copyrighted, you cannot give it away for free!

The biggest problems people have with ACTA though, is that politicians are circumventing the normal due process of their countries in signing and supporting this without any voting input of their people, and that the details of ACTA are being kept secret from the people, being discussed and written in secret closed-door meetings. (No, really. They're secret, and they do not let in any press or lobbyists that are against this agreement.) This is seen as a major threat to Democracy everywhere, and has angered and outraged not only the Internet community, but anyone who cares about politics being of the people for the people, not of the corporations for the corporations.

Practical Tip of the Day:
I guess this isn't so much a tip as it is a "heads up". The Internet activist group Anonymous is planning it's own version of a protest today, so many government and large media company websites will likely be brought down today for large swaths of time. The group tends to use a version of a DDoS attack, and sometimes recruits new attackers by posting and sharing a link that is generally shortened as a "pastebin" address. So, if you do not wish to participate in cyber-attacks on government websites (which can get you jail time) I recommend avoiding any website links that start with "pastebin".

Special Edition: What is SOPA?

When you can count your page views on one hand, and you get three people asking for a particular topic, you're inclined to oblige. That being said, today's topic is bit more complex than I'd normally cover, but I feel fairly confident that I can explain this in a way everyone can understand.

SOPA- A.K.A. the "Stop Online Piracy Act" hopes to spur innovation and entrepenuership by preventing people from steal other people's copyrighted material. Sounds good, right? I'm a fan of new things, and I'm not a fan of people stealing things. The problem lies in how they do it though.

SOPA's original form (by the time this is read it's possible that it's been amended, so bear that in mind) contains language that would allow the US Department of Justice or the copyright holder to seek court orders that would:

A. Stop payment to the websites from any or all advertisements
B. Shut the website down temporarily.
C. Bar search engines from linking to the website.
D. All of the above.

Still doesn't sound too bad though, right? If a website is redistributing stolen goods it deserves to be shut down and punished, right? Well, here's the catch- the wording allows those things to happen not only to websites that knowingly do that, but also to websites who are unaware of it, or aren't actually doing anything wrong at all! Now, at this point you might be inclined to consider this "spin" by the liberal media or whatnot, but hang in there with me.

It does actually state that the above penalties can be enforced as soon as the alleged victim issues a complaint regardless of whether or not the claim turns out to be true. This would mean that YouTube would be down while it's under investigation if a teenage girl singing a Brittany Spears song counts as copyright infringement. It would mean that if ever someone posted a picture of a Coke can on Facebook it would also go down. Google would most likely cease to exist, or, if it did, it would be censored from every webpage that may-or-may-not potentially have copyrighted material.

If you hear your techie friends ranting about SOPA, you now know why. It is seen in the tech community as the largest threat to Internet censorship yet, and the Internet is the largest example of America's right to Freedom of Speech. When the Internet begins to become censored it will be viewed as the largest infringement of civil liberties yet.