Speak Out Against CISPA: Join The Twitter Campaign And Contact Your Representative

from the get-involved dept

On Friday, the House Intelligence Committee released a new draft of CISPA, the dangerous cybersecurity bill that threatens to give the government access to huge amounts of personal data. Despite small improvements in some areas, the bill still has huge problems and lacks adequate privacy safeguards—and the House is going to vote on it next week. As part of a final push to let Congress know what people think of this bad legislation, several organizations have launched public action campaigns that you can get involved in.

Firstly, there is the Congress Wants Too Much Information campaign on Twitter. Multiple groups are asking you to tweet your thoughts on CISPA with the hashtags #CongressTMI and #CISPA. U.S. citizens can look up and tag their representatives' Twitter accounts—and you can also include @HouseIntelComm, the authors of the bill. The groups behind the campaign suggest pointing out examples of data that could, but shouldn't, be shared under CISPA, such as:

@Myrepresentative Does the FBI need to know what books I checked out from my local library? #CongressTMI Stop #CISPA

@Myrepresentative Does the military need to know I send my Mom lolcat pictures? #CongressTMI Stop #CISPA

@Myrepresentative Does the NSA need to know I watch Netflix from my work computer? #CongressTMI Stop #CISPA

Now is also the time to directly contact members of Congress by phone or by email. There are tools to make this easier from the ACLU, the EFF and Free Press.

Pressure is also increasing on the companies that back CISPA, especially those in the technology sphere. In addition to contacting Congress, you can send a message to CISPA's private supporters by signing AccessNow's petition to all of them, and Demand Progress' petition directed specifically at Facebook.

CISPA still enjoys a lot of support in Congress, but the growing public backlash means the bill's future is uncertain. With continued effort, Congress can be convinced to back off and work on crafting smarter, more narrowly tailored cybersecurity legislation that protects people's privacy.

Of equal importance is the bigger message this sends to lawmakers. There are many people who still think what happened with SOPA was a fluke, driven by the technology lobby and a few key tech companies. But the growing opposition to CISPA—a bill supported by many of the same tech giants that opposed SOPA—proves that it was something much more significant, and that the online community will not be ignored when it comes to decisions that govern the internet.

Filed Under: cispa, congress, petition, tmi, twitter
Companies: aclu, demand progress, eff, free press

US Chamber Of Commerce So Clueless It Thinks You Have To Be 'Anti-IP' To Be Against E-PARASITE Bill

from the not-the-case,-steve-o dept

Steve Tepp is the US Chamber of Commerce's (the world's largest lobbying group) point man on PROTECT IP/E-PARASITE/SOPA. His latest move is to try attacking anyone who points out the problems of E-PARASITE/SOPA. First up? Demand Progress, who dared to call it a "blacklist bill." According to Tepp, it's not a blacklist bill, because the lobbyists who wrote the bill (potentially including Tepp himself) were smart enough not to write "list" in the text of the bill.

Of course the bill doesn't actually say that there's a list. Just as the Chinese Great Firewall doesn't actually involve the government "listing" sites, but merely threatens ISPs with liability if they let bad sites through, E-PARASITE massively broadens the definitions of what's "dedicated to the theft of U.S. property" such that it now includes, more or less, the entire internet, and threatens sites with the equivalent of internet death: blocking from search engines, blocking from DNS (and more!), cutting off any funding sources. No, there's no "blacklist," there's just the threat of cutting off just about any internet site. On top of that, there's an awkwardly worded attempt to force every site to proactively monitor any infringement. Is that why the US Chamber of Commerce doesn't allow comments on its site? Or is it because it knows that no one actually believes the crap it shovels?

But Tepp's intellectual dishonesty is worse than just pretending that without the word "list" there's no actual blacklist. No, the really cheap move is to imply that only the "anti-IP crowd" is against this bill. This is the latest strategy of those who wish to massively regulate the internet so that it looks more like TV -- a broadcast medium, rather than a communications medium. They refer to anyone who points out the massive negative consequences of their legislative nastiness as being "anti-IP." You've seen it in Techdirt's comments for the past few weeks, with certain anonymous commenters throwing hissy fits about how I'm actually "pro-piracy," when I'm anything but. If you don't think this is part of the coordinated marketing campaign by the largest lobbying organization in the world, you're not paying attention.

So, Steve, let's be clear: being against this bill is not about being "anti-IP." It's about being pro-innovation, pro-internet. It's about recognizing the massive benefits of an open internet. It's about recognizing the massive benefits to the American (and world) economy that were created from an open internet that didn't involve misplaced third party liability.

The concerns of those about this bill have nothing to do with intellectual property and whether it's good or bad. It's about the collateral damage that such a vast change to the legal and technical framework that the internet has been based on for years will cause.

To brush those concerns away as being "the anti-IP crowd," is to show ignorance of what's at stake.

What we don't understand, Steve, is why you would seek to shut down the open internet, killing off more jobs than ever existed in the entertainment industry. We thought the US Chamber of Commerce was supposed to support small businesses. Instead, you're seeking to make any internet business nearly impossible, unless they've already hired a dozen lawyers. I guess if your goal is for full employment for trial lawyers, you're making headway. But, seriously, if you can't debate this subject honestly, don't be surprised when the next generation of businesses dumps the US CoC. Pro tip: pissing off every company of the next generation that might support your bloated organization is no way to build for the future. And don't think jobs "in the industry" will be waiting for you. Without the next generation of great startups that you're trying to kill off, the big content companies who pay your salary these days, won't have the new platforms they need to succeed.

Filed Under: anti-ip, attacks, blacklist, e-parasite, sopa, steve tepp
Companies: demand progress, us chamber of commerce

ICE Stalling On More FOIA Requests Concerning Domain Name Seizures

from the and-of-course dept

We recently noted that Homeland Security's ICE group appeared to be stalling in responding to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request from Michael Robertson's NakedGovernment. It turns out that's not the only such request it's been stalling on. The folks over at Muckrock (who helped us with our own FOIA requests), alert us to the news that Aaron Swartz, the director of Demand Progress (the organization that the MPAA has been trying to smear with false accusations), filed a similar FOIA request at about the same time. There were apparently some issues with it, but those issues were resolved in February... and since then, not a peep out of ICE.

Filed Under: dhs, domain seizures, foia, ice, stalling
Companies: demand progress

MPAA Attacks Demand Progress With Ridiculous & Unsubstantiated Claims

from the getting-desperate dept

Demand Progress is an online activist group that runs campaigns to get lots of people involved on political issues that impact the internet, innovation and free speech. You can see the list of campaigns that it's working on currently, and you'll see lots of stuff that we regularly talk about. The organization has been doing a bang up job trying to point out problems with the PROTECT IP Act, and apparently the lovely folks over at the MPAA finally noticed, and decided that rather than respond with facts, it was instead going to smear the well respected organization in a blog post (which, of course, you can't comment on, because the MPAA knows that very few people actually support its stance).

Karl, who pointed this story out to us, highlights the ridiculous nature of the blog post:

It claims:

1. Demand Progress is an "ally" and a "partner in business" with "criminal enterprises that have a strong, direct, personal and commercial interest in continuing to steal from American creative workers and businesses." It source for this? A screenshot where someone from Demand Progrss posted about COICA on Demonoid's message boards. That's right: merely posting on a forum makes you a "partner in business" with the site. Update: Demand Progress clarifies: the message board post wasn't even by someone at Demand Progress, it was just someone at Demonoid who posted the info...

2. It says the signatures from Demand Progress are fakes. This is backed up by a claim that they tried using fake emails to sign the petition, and it worked. Demand Progress now has a system where emails from their site are sent to representatives directly, and asks for addresses and emails. However, other than their two fake emails, they show no evidence that any other signature is actually fake. Furthermore, the way Demand Progress usually works is that you sign their mailing list; they send an email to that list; and in that email is a link to sign the petition using your signup info. That system is hardly condusive to abuse.

And we should talk about the fact that they called Demonoid a "rogue website." In their very next post, also from May 24, they quote Floyd Abrams (their hired lawyer), who claimed this:

"any website basically engaged in legal activities, such as commentary, socializing or commerce, cannot be pursued under the PROTECT IP Act. Indeed, the definitions of 'dedicated to infringing activities' specifically exclude websites that have any other 'significant use,' or websites that are not 'primarily' used for infringement."

If Abrams is right, then Demonoid should NOT be considered a "rogue website." Their forums constitute "commentary or socializing," and is a "significant use." Yet the MPAA presents this "commentary or socializing" as evidence of criminal consipiracy!

Separately, in looking at the MPAA's blog post, I noted that it had no byline other than "MPAA." As far as I can tell, every other blog post that the MPAA has put up has been signed by the person who actually wrote it. Kinda makes you wonder if whoever wrote this particular blog post knew that it was full of crap, and didn't want their name associated with it.

Filed Under: protect ip, smears
Companies: demand progress, mpaa