NO! - Top EU court says U.S. Safe Harbor Decision is invalid.

NO! - Top EU court says U.S.-EU data transfer deal is invalid. (Reuters).

A system enabling data transfers from the European Union to the United States by thousands of companies is invalid, the highest European Union court said on Tuesday in a landmark ruling that will leave firms scrambling to find alternative measures.

"The Court of Justice declares that the Commission’s U.S. Safe Harbor Decision is invalid," it said in a statement.

The decision could sound the death knell for the Safe Harbor framework set up fifteen years ago to help companies on both sides of the Atlantic conduct everyday business but which has come under heavy fire following 2013 revelations of mass U.S. snooping.

Without Safe Harbor, personal data transfers are forbidden, or only allowed via costlier and more time-consuming means, under EU laws that prohibit data-sharing with countries deemed to have lower privacy standards, of which the United States is one.

The Court of Justice of the European Union (ECJ) said that U.S. companies are "bound to disregard, without limitation," the privacy safeguards provided in Safe Harbor where they come into conflict with the national security, public interest and law enforcement requirements of the United States.Read the full story here.

Information Giants Apple and Google Just Attended a Confidential Spy Summit in secluded English Mansion.

Information Giants Apple and Google Just Attended a Confidential Spy Summit in secluded English Mansion. (FirstLook).

At an 18th-century mansion in England’s countryside last week, current and former spy chiefs from seven countries faced off with representatives from tech giants Apple and Google to discuss government surveillance in the aftermath of Edward Snowden’s leaks.

The three-day conference, which took place behind closed doors and under strict rules about confidentiality, was aimed at debating the line between privacy and security.


Among an extraordinary list of attendees were a host of current or former heads from spy agencies such as the CIA and British electronic surveillance agency Government Communications Headquarters, or GCHQ. Other current or former top spooks from Australia, Canada, France, Germany and Sweden were also in attendance. 

Google, Apple, and telecommunications company Vodafone sent some of their senior policy and legal staff to the discussions. And a handful of academics and journalists were also present. Read the full story here.

Iran launches children’s SIM card with controlled access to 'Halal' mobile Internet.

Iran launches children’s SIM card with controlled access to 'Halal' mobile Internet. (Taz).

Iran has unveiled a special SIM card that allows parents to control the mobile Internet usage of their children. The children’s SIM card was unveiled April 30 in Iran’s central city of Qom during a ceremony attended by parliament speaker, Ali Larijani.

The SIM card allows parents to control how their children use the Internet and even monitor their contact list in the cell phone, Iran’s Mehr news agency reported.

Iranian Ministry of Communications and Information Technology earlier adopted a decision according to which all Iranian mobile operators should issue special SIM cards for children and teenagers with restricted access to 3G and 4G networks.

Under the ministry’s decision, sale of SIM cards to children and teenagers under 18 will be prohibited in Iran.

The latest statistics of Iran’s Internet Penetration Management Portal put the number of Internet users in Iran at 40 million, indicating that the Internet penetration rate of the country stood at 53.29 percent in June 2014. About 11.07 million of the users in Iran have used GPRS connection to access the Internet over the same period.

It should be noted that several of world's most popular networks, such as Twitter and Facebook are banned in Iran, while users are still able to access them via proxies. A proxy allows bypassing 'gates' meant to block certain sites.


A survey by Iranian Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports indicates that 69.3 percent of the country's young generation use proxy servers to by-pass the filters and access banned Internet websites.

'Nothing is beyond our reach' - “How Tor Is Building a New Dark Net with Help from the U.S. Military”

'Nothing is beyond our reach' - “How Tor Is Building a New Dark Net with Help from the U.S. Military” (DD).

To stay ahead in the security race, Tor is building the next-generation Dark Net in part with funding from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the U.S. military agency charged with inventing the cutting edge of new technology.

The funding, which began in 2014, comes as part of DARPA’s Memex project, a “groundbreaking” search engine designed to best commercial titans like Google at searching the Deep Web and other oft-ignored terrain for the U.S. intelligence, law enforcement, and military. To build Memex, DARPA is partnered with universities like Carnegie Mellon, NASA, private research firms, and several Tor Project developers.

DARPA is funding multiple projects focused on improving Tor’s hidden services across “1-3 years,” Tor’s director of communications Kate Krauss told the Daily Dot via email. Tor declined to give more specifics on the grant, like its monetary value and terms, and DARPA didn’t respond to a request for comment. Hmmm......Still feel 'safe' using Tor?Read the full story here.

U.S. House of Representatives Shamefully Passes CISPA; Internet Freedom Advocates Prepare for a Battle in the Senate.

U.S. House of Representatives Shamefully Passes CISPA; Internet Freedom Advocates Prepare for a Battle in the Senate.(EFF).Today, Internet freedom advocates everywhere turned their eyes to the U.S. House of Representatives as that legislative body considered the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act.

For the second year in a row, the House voted to approve CISPA, a bill that would allow companies to bypass all existing privacy law to spy on communications and pass sensitive user data to the government. EFF condemns the vote in the House and vows to continue the fight in the Senate.

"CISPA is a poorly drafted bill that would provide a gaping exception to bedrock privacy law,” EFF Senior Staff Attorney Kurt Opsahl said. “While we all agree that our nation needs to address pressing Internet security issues, this bill sacrifices online privacy while failing to take common-sense steps to improve security."

The legislation passed 288-127, despite a veto threat from Pres. Barack Obama, who expressed serious concerns about the danger CISPA poses to civil liberties.

"This bill undermines the privacy of millions of Internet users,” said Rainey Reitman, EFF Activism Director. “Hundreds of thousands of Internet users opposed this bill, joining the White House and Internet security experts in voicing concerns about the civil liberties ramifications of CISPA. We’re committed to taking this fight to the Senate and fighting to ensure no law which would be so detrimental to online privacy is passed on our watch.”

EFF extends its deep gratitude to the many organization that have worked with us on this campaign and the tens of thousand of EFF members who helped us by contacting Congress to oppose CISPA. We look forward to continuing to fight by your side in defense of civil liberties as CISPA moves to the Senate.Read the full story here.

US Internet providers will start throttling connection speeds for customers alleged to be pirating copyright-protected materials.

US Internet providers will start throttling connection speeds for customers alleged to be pirating copyright-protected materials.(RT). Starting this week, Internet Service Providers will start throttling connection speeds for customers alleged to be pirating copyright-protected materials.

Months after a controversial “six-strike” program was slated to be rolled out by the biggest ISPs in the United States, the Copyright Alert System (CAS) confirmed on Monday that the initiative has gone live.

The program, critiqued by Internet freedom activists and privacy advocates alike, will let ISPs take six steps of escalating severity in handling incidents where customers are believed to be illegally sharing material. Through the “graduate response” approach, suspected copyright criminals could be issued a series of warnings for illegally downloading protected content.

With the first strike caught by the CAS, a customer could be issued a warning. As strikes increase, however, “mitigation measures,” connection speed throttling and termination of service are all possible options.

“Practically speaking, this means our content partners will begin sending notices of alleged P2P [peer-to-peer] copyright infringement to ISPs, and the ISPs will begin forwarding those notices in the form of Copyright Alerts to consumers,” Jill Lesser of the Center for Copyright Information rights in a blog post on Monday.

“Consumers whose accounts have been used to share copyrighted content over P2P networks illegally (or without authority) will receive Alerts that are meant to educate rather than punish, and direct them to legal alternatives. And for those consumers who believe they received Alerts in error, an easy to use process will be in place for them to seek independent review of the Alerts they received,” she adds — neglecting to mention that the appeals process costs customers $35 a pop.

Previously, Time Warner, Verizon, AT and T, Comcast, Cablevision Systems and other ISPs have signed onto the program, which was last scheduled to start in July 2012.

When the six-strikes program was first introduced, the White House issued an official statement saying it should “have a significant impact on reducing online piracy.”Read the full story here.

Related: The Copyright Propaganda Machine Gets a New Agent: Your ISP.

Video - Sun News Exclusive: 'Our Digital Soul'.

Video - Sun News Exclusive: 'Our Digital Soul'.

Net Neutrality? Google Prods Users to Fight Copyright Law

Net Neutrality? Google Prods Users to Fight Copyright Law.(Spiegel).By Sven Becker and Marcel Rosenbach. Google is increasingly throwing around its power to improve its bottom line. The latest incident is a draft law in Germany that would force the company to share some revenues with newspaper publishers. Meddling in politics is certainly not illegal, but it could be risky.
At its core, the proposal concerns the headlines and short teaser texts indexed by search engines -- the so-called snippets.
The bill aims to protect copyrights that belong to newspapers and their publishers. When search engines display those snippets "for commercial purposes," the proposed law would allow the publishing houses to charge a fee. Bloggers, clubs, associations and even company press reviews would not be affected by the current draft version of the law.
Until last week, this somewhat arcane issue in copyright law caused little more than a ripple in the public consciousness.
But all that changed on Tuesday. That's when Google declared the skirmish over the info snippet as a major battleground in the big war -- namely the fight for freedom on the Web. Consequently, the roughly 15.6 million users who bombard Google Germany with search queries every day were presented with a link under the usual search mask that led them directly to a campaign website -- where the search engine giant called for resistance: "Defend Your Net." According to Google, the law would "make it significantly more difficult to find the information you are searching for on the Internet." Read the full story here.

Video - How the ITU could put the internet behind closed doors.

Take action at http://www.whatistheITU.org
Fight for the Future and Access collaborated on this short, informative video about a serious threat to the free and open internet that could have devastating effects for human rights and free expression around the globe.

U.N. to Seek Control of the Internet.

U.N. to Seek Control of the Internet.(WS).Next week the United Nations' International Telecommunications Union will meet in Dubai to figure out how to control the Internet. Representatives from 193 nations will attend the nearly two week long meeting, according to news reports. "Next week the ITU holds a negotiating conference in Dubai, and past months have brought many leaks of proposals for a new treaty. U.S. congressional resolutions and much of the commentary, including in this column, have focused on proposals by authoritarian governments to censor the Internet. Just as objectionable are proposals that ignore how the Internet works, threatening its smooth and open operations," reports the Wall Street Journal. "Having the Internet rewired by bureaucrats would be like handing a Stradivarius to a gorilla. The Internet is made up of 40,000 networks that interconnect among 425,000 global routes, cheaply and efficiently delivering messages and other digital content among more than two billion people around the world, with some 500,000 new users a day. ... "Proposals for the new ITU treaty run to more than 200 pages. One idea is to apply the ITU's long-distance telephone rules to the Internet by creating a 'sender-party-pays' rule. International phone calls include a fee from the originating country to the local phone company at the receiving end. Under a sender-pays approach, U.S.-based websites would pay a local network for each visitor from overseas, effectively taxing firms such as Google and Facebook. The idea is technically impractical because unlike phone networks, the Internet doesn't recognize national borders. But authoritarians are pushing the tax, hoping their citizens will be cut off from U.S. websites that decide foreign visitors are too expensive to serve."Arthur Herman explains "The UN's Internet Grab" here.And even Google has already come out against the ITU.Read the full story here.

U.S. Copyright Surveillance Machine About To Be Switched On, Promises of Transparency Already Broken.

U.S. Copyright Surveillance Machine About To Be Switched On, Promises of Transparency Already Broken. (EFFhttps://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2012/11/us-copyright-surveillance-machine-about-be-switched-on).By Mitch Stoltz.The "Copyright Alert System" – an elaborate combination of surveillance, warnings, punishments, and "education" directed at customers of most major U.S. Internet service providers – is poised to launch in the next few weeks, as has been widely reported. The problems with it are legion.

Big media companies are launching a massive peer-to-peer surveillance scheme to snoop on subscribers. Based on the results of that snooping, ISPs will be serving as Hollywood’s private enforcement arm, without the checks and balances public enforcement requires. Once a subscriber is accused, she must prove her innocence, without many of the legal defenses she’d have in a courtroom. The "educational" materials posted for subscribers thus far look more like propaganda, slanted towards major entertainment companies' view of copyright. And all of this was set up with the encouragement and endorsement of the U.S. government.

One of the mechanisms that was supposed to ensure some degree of fairness was independent auditing of the P2P surveillance methods used to identify alleged infringers, and of the ISPs' procedures for matching Internet Protocol addresses to actual humans. But last month, the group set up to oversee the system - the Center for Copyright Information - revealed that its "independent" reviewer was Stroz Friedberg, a lobbying firm that represented the Recording Industry Association of America in the halls of Congress from 2004 to 2009. Needless to say, RIAA's former lobbying firm is hardly an "independent" reviewer. And CCI could have discovered the relationship between Stroz and the RIAA – it’s on the public record, in reports that lobbyists must file with Congress every year.

It gets worse.

In response to criticism of this obvious conflict of interest, CCI acknowledged that "[r]ecent reports that a former employee of Stroz Friedberg lobbied several years ago on behalf of RIAA on matters unrelated to CCI have raised questions" about the group's impartiality. In the name of “maintaining transparency,” CCI released the Stroz report to the public last week.

But it turns out the CCI has a funny definition of “transparency.” Nearly every significant detail of how the massive P2P monitoring scheme will work is redacted out of the public version. What remains is this: CCI hired a company called MarkMonitor, which will join BitTorrent networks and collect the Internet Protocol addresses of computers that are sharing certain movies and songs (MPAA and RIAA members supply the lists). Their software, described only as "collection mechanisms" and "scanning systems" in the public version, compares the beginning, end, and some of the middle of the file against a reference version, and, if they match, emails the ISP with the IP address of the accused file-sharer. The ISP then sends an escalating series of warnings and punishments to the subscriber, including mandatory "copyright education" and potential bandwidth throttling or blocking of popular websites.

There's a lot we simply can't tell from this heavily redacted report. Most importantly, we have no way of knowing if legal, non-infringing uses of copyrighted movies and music will be flagged as infringing, leading to escalating "mitigation measures" for law-abiding Internet subscribers. We don't know what, if any, protocols other than BitTorrent the system will be snooping on. And we don't know how, or how accurately, the ISPs match IP addresses to the names of actual human beings. That process, says CCI, was described in another Stroz Friedberg report that hasn't been released.

CCI and its backers have made every effort to portray the system as fair and balanced. But subscribers are rightly wary of a copyright surveillance machine that dispenses warnings and punishments based on a secret process. Hopefully CCI will go to greater lengths to find an “independent” reviewer next time – but we’re not optimistic. According to CCI, this fatally flawed system, created via a backroom deal with no subscriber input, will start spying on U.S. subscribers' Internet usage, and sending out warnings and punishments, before the end of 2012. In light of what we already know, the better course would be to press reset.

Please visit The Electronic Frontier Foundation for the latest copyright, privacy, and digital surveillance news

Showdown set on bid to give U.N. control of Internet.

Showdown set on bid to give U.N. control of Internet.(AP).It is expected to be the mother of all cyber diplomatic battles. When delegates gather in Dubai in December for an obscure U.N. agency meeting, fighting is expected to be intense over proposals to rewrite global telecom rules to effectively give the United Nations control over the Internet. Russia, China and other countries back a move to place the Internet under the authority of the International Telecommunications Union, a U.N. agency that sets technical standards for global phone calls. U.S. officials say placing the Internet under U.N. control would undermine the freewheeling nature of cyberspace, which promotes open commerce and free expression, and could give a green light for some countries to crackdown on dissidents. Observers say a number of authoritarian states will back the move, and that the major Western nations will oppose it, meaning the developing world could make a difference. 
“The most likely outcome is a tie, and if that happens there won’t be any dramatic changes, although that could change if the developing countries make a big push,” said James Lewis, director of the Technology and Public Policy Program at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies.
“But there is a lot of discontent with how the Internet is governed and the U.S. will have to deal with that at some point.” Lewis said there was still an overwhelming perception that the U.S. owns and manages the Internet. Opponents have a “powerful argument” to create a global authority to manage the Internet, Lewis said, but “we need to find some way to accommodate national laws in a way that doesn't sacrifice human rights.”
Terry Kramer, the special U.S. envoy for the talks, has expressed Washington’s position opposing proposals by Russia, China and others to expand the ITU’s authority to regulate the Internet. “The Internet has grown precisely because it has not been micro-managed or owned by any government or multinational organization,” Kramer told a recent forum. “There is no Internet central office. Its openness and decentralization are its strengths.” The head of the ITU, Hamadoun Toure, said his agency has “the depth of experience that comes from being the world's longest established intergovernmental organization.” Toure wrote in the British newspaper The Guardian that any change in regulation should “express the common will of ITU’s major stakeholders” and “find win-win solutions that will act as a positive catalyst.” But Harold Feld of the U.S.-based non-government group Public Knowledge said any new rules could have devastating consequences. “These proposals, from the Russian Federation and several Arab states, would for the first time explicitly embrace the concept that governments have a right to control online communications and disrupt Internet access services,” Feld said on a blog post.
“This would reverse the trend of the last few years increasingly finding that such actions violate fundamental human rights.” Paul Rohmeyer, who follows cyber-security at the Stevens Institute of Technology, pointed to a “sense of anxiety” about the meeting in part because of a lack of transparency. He said it was unclear why the ITU is being considered for a role in the Internet.
“The ITU historically has been a standards-setting body and its roots are in the telecom industry. I'm not familiar with anything they've done that's had an impact on the Internet today,” Rohmeyer told AFP. And the analyst noted that the significance of extending “governance” of the Internet to the ITU remains unclear. Some observers point out that the ITU hired a Russian security firm to investigate the Flame virus, which sparked concerns about the dangers in cyberspace and the need for better cyber-security cooperation. Rohmeyer said it was unclear whether a conspiracy was at hand, but that “the suggestion that the Internet is a dangerous place could be used to justify greater controls.”
Observers are also troubled by a proposal by European telecom operators seeking to shift the cost of communication from the receiving party to the sender. This could mean huge costs for U.S. Internet giants like Facebook and Google. “This would create a new revenue stream for corrupt, autocratic regimes and raise the cost of accessing international websites and information on the Internet,” said Eli Dourado of George Mason University.
Milton Mueller, a professor of information studies at Syracuse University who specializes in Internet governance, said most of the concerns are being blown out of proportion. Mueller said the ITU “already recognizes the sovereign right of nations to restrict communications into and out of the country.” “What gets lost in the confusion over content regulation is that the real motive of most of the reactionary governments is to protect themselves from economic competition caused by telecom liberalization and deregulation, of which the Internet is only one part,” he said.Read the full story here.

"Happy New Year" - Major Internet service providers to institute so-called six-strikes plan by year’s end.

"Happy New Year" - Major Internet service providers to institute so-called six-strikes plan by year’s end.(Wired).

The nation’s major internet service providers by year’s end will institute a so-called six-strikes plan, the “Copyright Alert System” initiative backed by the Obama administration and pushed by Hollywood and the major record labels to disrupt and possibly terminate internet access for online copyright scofflaws.

The plan, now four years in the making, includes participation by AT&T, Cablevision Systems, Comcast, Time Warner Cable and Verizon. After four offenses, the historic plan calls for these residential internet providers to initiate so-called “mitigation measures” (.pdf) that might include reducing internet speeds and redirecting a subscriber’s service to an “educational” landing page about infringement.
The internet companies may eliminate service altogether for repeat file-sharing offenders, although the plan does not directly call for such drastic action.
“We are farily confident the program will launch by year’s end,” said Jill Lesser, the executive director of the Center for Copyright Information, the name of the group behind the program.
The program, which monitors peer-to-peer file-sharing services, was to have been deployed sooner, according to Gigi Sohn, president of digital rights group Public Knowledge, and an adviser to the center.
Sohn noted that the internet was aflame in January with federal anti-piracy proposals — the Stop Online Piracy Act and the Protect IP Act — both of which went down in flames amid a huge backlash and internet blackout.

Top-ranking Obama administration officials, including the U.S. copyright czar Victoria Espinel, played an active role in secret negotiations between Hollywood, the recording industry and ISPs to disrupt internet access for users suspected of violating copyright law, according to internal White House e-mails.
The e-mails, obtained via the Freedom of Information Act, show the administration’s cozy relationship with Hollywood and the music industry’s lobbying arms and its early support for the copyright-violation crackdown system publicly announced in July, 2011.
Under the six-strikes plan, internet subscribers may challenge their dings for a $35 filing fee paid to an arbitration service. They also get a free pass, one time, if they claim the infringement was based on having an open, unencrypted Wi-Fi network.
France has a much more stringent plan. Last month, the nation levied its first fine, $193, under its three-strikes plan.Read the full story here.

Verizon Wireless wants to 'edit' your Internet access.

Verizon Wireless wants to 'edit' your Internet access.(CNet).

What if your wireless provider gave you Internet access and search results according to what it decided was a "priority"?

As a Verizon Wireless customer, I'm furious at the idea that it would "pick favorites" over what I was actually looking for -- especially if it was an emergency.
But that's just what Verizon is fighting in court to do right now. Verizon has filed a brief (Verizon vs. FCC) with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit for the "freedom" to edit your Internet, dear customer.
If you think this would remain a Verizon issue, think again. If Verizon gatecrashes Internet access filtering, you better bet that other ISPs will hustle to get on the train to sell Internet "priority" spots to the highest bidders.
This comes at the same time that Verizon is set to win approval from the FCC, according to reports, in an airwave buyback deal from a group of cable companies (including Time Warner and Comcast). Only the U.S. Justice Department can block the deal.
Verizon is suing to have the FCC's net neutrality order thrown out -- and it's not the first time, as Verizon was quick to challenge the FCC about this very issue in 2011 when the FCC first set such rules.
The FCC's order was intended to keep the Internet as it was when it began -- to keep Internet service providers like Verizon from becoming "editors" or gatekeepers. It holds that neither Verizon nor any other Internet provider can block or slow access to online content, including if they disagree with its message or are being paid by a third party to favor some alternative.
Verizon's argument is sure to enrage people who cherish the free and open Internet. Verizon's reason is that Internet/broadband providers inherently have "editorial discretion."Hmmmm............“Withholding information is the essence of tyranny. Control of the flow of information is the tool of the dictatorship.” ~ Bruce Coville.Read the full story here.

SOPA Being Reintroduced Through Creation of Copyright Commissars.

SOPA Being Reintroduced Through Creation of Copyright Commissars.(AP).By Joe Wright.The battle rages on between lovers of the free Internet and a big government hellbent on controlling the only semblance of a fair and balanced media that still exists.

An onslaught of bills have been introduced worldwide which seek to criminalize the fundamental way that information is freely shared. Among the most comprehensive:

ACTA - Recently struck down by the European Parliament in a 478 to 39 vote after street protests swept across Europe. However, ACTA has already been signed in the United States. ACTA allows accusers of copyright infringement to bypass judicial review. Lack of “due process” makes these bills and ACTA unconstitutional and violates the Magna Carta, a charter signed in 1215 on which most Western law is based, including the US Constitution. (Source)

PIPA - A massive protest in January generated over 7 million petition signatures, which caused the bill to be postponed. Some of the most popular websites on the planet blackened their pages to protest the PROTECT IP Act, (S. 968), which threatens free access to information on the Web by allowing accusers to shut down an entire website - even shared platforms like Twitter, WordPress and YouTube, because of a single copyright violation. (Source)

OPEN - Darrell Issa (CA-R) and 24 co-sponsors introduced H.R. 3782. The bill claims to only target foreign websites for digital trade violations, while keeping Americans free to surf and post, but the bill's wording was wide open to pursue American sites. (Source)

CISPA - The grandaddy of cyber legislation, ushering in fascism to the Internet by giving full control to the Department of Defense and all of its satellite federal agencies and private contractors to surveil and wage cyberwar. (Source)

Resistance has been strong, but Big Brother remains motivated to move in by stealth if necessary, as evidenced by a new related bill that seeks to sneak a previously defeated piece of SOPA past an unsuspecting public.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has been at the forefront of keeping the public informed about the myriad ways that our (s)elected representatives are attempting to usher in tyranny to the free market of ideas known as the World Wide Web.As Adi Kamdar writes:

Even after millions rallied against the passage of SOPA/PIPA, the House is still quietly trying to pass a related bill that would give the entertainment industry more permanent, government-funded spokespeople. The Intellectual Property, Competition, and the Internet Subcommittee of the House Judiciary Committee recently held a hearing on Lamar Smith's IP Attaché Act (PDF), a bill that increases intellectual property policing around the world. The Act would create an Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property, as well as broaden the use of IP attachés in particular U.S. embassies. (The attachés were notably present in Sec. 205 of SOPA—which was also introduced by Smith.) [Source]

Kamdar rightly states that this empowers Hollywood with "traveling foot soldiers" that become content commissars by virtue of being "IP Attachés." - or world ambassadors for Internet censorship. In so doing, it creates yet another pyramid of control and intimidation that seeks to corral content through the ever-present threat of copyright violations.

So far, private copyright trolls have been repeatedly defeated (here and here for a couple recent examples), as judge after judge has ruled their lawsuits to be completely without merit. However, with this new piece of legislation, the federal government very well could create its own copyright troll goon squad at the behest of establishment lobbyists and their easily bought-and-paid-for congressmen.

Please continue following any mention of Internet regulation no matter how slick the veneer, as the final nail in the coffin of free expression and sharing of information contrary to the establishment media could arrive at any time, cloaked in ways we might not yet suspect.

It is clear that despite overwhelming public outcry, there are those in Congress such as Lamar Smith who clearly serve a different master.Read the full story here.

Verizon to FCC: Free speech trumps Net neutrality rules.

Verizon to FCC: Free speech trumps Net neutrality rules.(CNet). By Marguerite Reardon. Bring out the constitutional scholars: Verizon says the Federal Communications Commission's Net neutrality rules violate the right to free speech. In a nutshell, Verizon argues that the FCC has overstepped its authority with its Net neutrality rules, going so far as to argue that the rules are unconstitutional -- Verizon sees the transmission of data across its network as "speech." As if that's not enough, the carrier argues that the rules are "arbitrary and capricious." In other words, Verizon doesn't believe the rules are necessary given that there hasn't been a big problem of companies slowing down traffic or blocking services on their networks. Verizon laid out its argument in a brief filed yesterday in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. In December 2010, the FCC adopted a set of Net neutrality rules in an effort to protect broadband users from having a service provider slow down traffic or block certain content. The agency adopted those rules after it lost a court battle over having penalized cable and broadband provider Comcast for violating its Net neutrality principles. But a federal court said that the FCC had overstepped its bounds in that case. Once the rules were officially registered with the government in September of last year, Verizon said it planned to file a lawsuit against the FCC challenging the rules and asking the court to overturn them.Read the full story here.

European Parliament rejects ACTA in landslide vote, what's next?

European Parliament rejects ACTA in landslide vote, what's next?(SG).European Parliament voted on July 4 to reject the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), the international treaty that internet freedom groups say opens the door for tight policing of online content. In a decisive win for opponents of the treaty, 478 MEPs voted against ACTA, with 39 votes in favour and 165 abstentions. European Parliament has the final authority on whether the 27-state bloc joins international treaties. The vote effectively kills the treaty’s ratification in the 22 member states that signed the agreement in Tokyo in January, since individual member states cannot join ACTA once the EU officially rejects it.
But it is not necessarily a killing blow for the treaty altogether, since ACTA needs ratification in by six signatory parties to go into effect. Other than the EU and its various member states, the agreement was signed by the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, South Korea, Singapore and Morocco. However, with the EU out, other developed countries would find it difficult to push acceptance of the treaty onto developing and underdeveloped nations. “I am very pleased that Parliament has followed my recommendation to reject ACTA,” British MEP David Martin, the EP’s rapporteur on the issue, said. He reiterated the concerns that ACTA was too vague, open to misinterpretation and could therefore jeopardise citizens’ liberties, emphasising the need to find alternative ways to protect intellectual property in the EU, as the “raw material of the EU economy”. MEPs decided against waiting for the opinion of the European Court of Justice, to which the European Commission referred ACTA in May, as proposed by the treaty’s defenders. La Quadrature du Net, one of the many advocacy groups defending the rights and freedoms of citizens on the Internet who vehemently opposed ACTA, called the vote a major victory for “the multitude of connected citizens and organizations who worked hard for years, but also a great hope on a global scale for a better democracy.” “On the ruins of ACTA, we must now build a positive copyright reform, taking into account our rights instead of attacking them,” the group said in a statement on its website.Hmmmm.......But...how about the Obama Admin who approved ACTA?Read the full story here.More here.

RIAA chief: ISPs to start policing copyright by July 1.

RIAA chief: ISPs to start policing copyright by July 1.(CNet).Comcast, Time Warner, and Verizon are among the ISPs preparing to implement a graduated response to piracy by July, says the music industry's chief lobbyist.The country's largest Internet service providers haven't given up on the idea of becoming copyright cops. CNET broke the news last June that the RIAA and counterparts at the trade group for the big film studios, had managed to get the deal through--with the help of the White House.
  Last July, Comcast, Cablevision, Verizon, Time Warner Cable and other bandwidth providers announced that they had agreed to adopt policies designed to discourage customers from illegally downloading music, movies and software. Since then, the ISPs have been very quiet about their antipiracy measures. But during a panel discussion before a gathering of U.S. publishers here today, Cary Sherman, CEO of the Recording Industry Association of America, said most of the participating ISPs are on track to begin implementing the program by July 1. "Each ISP has to develop their infrastructure for automating the system," Sherman said. They need this "for establishing the database so they can keep track of repeat infringers, so they know that this is the first notice or the third notice. Every ISP has to do it differently depending on the architecture of its particular network. Some are nearing completion and others are a little further from completion."
The program, commonly referred to as "graduated response," requires that ISPs send out one or two educational notices to those customers who are accused of downloading copyrighted content illegally. If the customer doesn't stop, the ISP is then asked to send out "confirmation notices" asking that they confirm they have received notice. At that time, the accused customers will also be informed of the risks they incur if they don't stop pirating material. If the customer is flagged for pirating again, the ISP can then ratchet up the pressure. Participating ISPs can choose from a list of penalties, or what the RIAA calls "mitigation measures," which include throttling down the customer's connection speed and suspending Web access until the subscriber agrees to stop pirating. Read the full story here.

The U.N. could tax U.S.-based Web sites, how long before Obama 'follows' their lead?

The U.N. could tax U.S.-based Web sites, how long before Obama 'follows' their lead?(National Review).

The U.N. recently revived its long-held desire to take control of the Internet. It is unlikely to get its way. So, led by European nations — who else? — it has hit upon another means by which to exercise its influence: Taxes. CNET reports:

The United Nations is considering a new Internet tax targeting the largest Web content providers, including Google, Facebook, Apple, and Netflix, that could cripple their ability to reach users in developing nations.
The European proposal, offered for debate at a December meeting of a U.N. agency called the International Telecommunication Union, would amend an existing telecommunications treaty by imposing heavy costs on popular Web sites and their network providers for the privilege of serving non-U.S. users, according to newly leaked documents.
The documents (No. 1 No. 2) punctuate warnings that the Obama administration and Republican members of Congress raised last week about how secret negotiations at the ITU over an international communications treaty could result in a radical re-engineering of the Internet ecosystem and allow governments to monitor or restrict their citizens’ online activities.
“It’s extremely worrisome,” Sally Shipman Wentworth, senior manager for public policy at theInternet Society, says about the proposed Internet taxes. “It could create an enormous amount of legal uncertainty and commercial uncertainty.”

The United Nations is considering a new internet tax targeting the largest Web content providers, including Google, Facebook, Apple, and Netflix, that could cripple their ability to reach users in developing nations.
The European proposal, offered for debate at a December meeting of a U.N. agency called the International Telecommunication Union, would amend an existing telecommunications treaty by imposing heavy costs on popular Web sites and their network providers for the privilege of serving non-U.S. users, according to newly leaked documents.
The documents (No. 1 No. 2) punctuate warnings that the Obama administration and Republican members of Congress raised last week about how secret negotiations at the ITU over an international communications treaty could result in a radical re-engineering of the internet ecosystem and allow governments to monitor or restrict their citizens’ online activities.
“It’s extremely worrisome,” Sally Shipman Wentworth, senior manager for public policy at theInternet Society, says about the proposed Internet taxes. “It could create an enormous amount of legal uncertainty and commercial uncertainty.”

Robert McDowell, a Republican member of the Federal Communications Commission who wrote an article (PDF) in the Wall Street Journal in February titled "The U.N. Threat to Internet Freedom," appeared to reference the ETNO's proposal for Internet taxes during last week's congressional hearing.
Proposals that foreign governments have pitched to him personally would "use international mandates to charge certain Web destinations on a 'per-click' basis to fund the build-out of broadband infrastructure across the globe," McDowell said. "Google, Tunes, Facebook, and Netflix are mentioned most often as prime sources of funding."
They could also allow "governments to monitor and restrict content or impose economic costs upon international data flows," added Ambassador Philip Verveer, a deputy assistant secretary of state.Read the full story here.

Lawmakers introduce measure to fight UN regulation of the Net.

Lawmakers introduce measure to fight UN regulation of the Net.(TheHill).A bipartisan group of lawmakers on the House Energy and Commerce Committee introduced a resolution on Wednesday urging the Obama administration to oppose efforts to give the United Nations more control over the Internet. Proposals to give the UN's International Telecommunication Union (ITU) more control over the governance of the Internet could come up at a conference in Dubai in December. The move is backed by China, Russia, Brazil, India and other UN members, but is opposed by lawmakers on both sides of the aisle, as well as the Obama administration.
The proposals would give the UN more control over cybersecurity, data privacy, technical standards and the Web’s address system. They would also allow foreign, government-owned Internet providers to charge extra for international traffic and allow for more price controls. The Internet is currently governed under a “multi-stakeholder” approach that gives power to a host of nonprofits, rather than governments. The resolution introduced Wednesday would encourage the United States delegation “to promote a global Internet free from government control and preserve and advance the successful multi-stakeholder model that governs the Internet today.”
Rep. Mary Bono Mack (R-Calif.) introduced the resolution with the support of Committee Chairman Fred Upton (R-Mich.), ranking Member Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), Communications and Technology Subcommittee Chairman Greg Walden (R-Ore.) and ranking subcommittee member Anna Eshoo (D-Calif.). The Communications and Technology Subcommittee will hold a hearing on Thursday morning to examine the UN plan.Read the full story here.