Tag Archives: SOPA
A Comparative Look at SOPA and Similar Laws around the Globe
Wikipedia, Reddit, and hundreds of other websites are dark today. Google has blacked out its logo. These steps are in opposition to the controversial bills SOPA (Stop Online Privacy Act) and PIPA (Protect Intellectual Property Act) that stand before the United States Congress. Facebook and other social networking sites also have stated their opposition to the bills.
What are SOPA and PIPA? SOPA is the House of Representatives version of an online piracy bill, and PIPA is the Senate version. Both bills allow intellectual property owners to shut down foreign websites for copyright infringement. The offended party could demand these sites be removed from search engines, denied payments from sites like Paypal, or block ISPs from allowing visitors to the sites.
Take a close look at SOPA. How does it compare to similar ideas in other countries? A few examples:
SPAIN–This month, Spain passed the Sinde law giving the Spanish government broad authority to impose strict penalties on website owners who have copyrighted material on their websites. Unlike SOPA, the law, which is named after Culture Minister Angeles Gonzalez-Sinde, targets only those who make money from copyrighted content. Copyright owners can complain to a government commission that can issue and order to block the website.
FRANCE–France passed the HADOPI law in 2009. Known as the “Three Strikes Piracy Law,” HADOPI cuts off internet access to users who have three violations of piracy in defiance of a European Parliament law specifically outlawing cutting off the internet without a court order. The legislation created the Haute Autorite pour la Diffusion des Oeuvres et la Protection des droits sur Internet (High Authority for the Diffusion of Works and the Protection of Rights on the Internet) that has the power to send an email warning at the first violation, followed by a mailed letter. The third violation can lead to an interruption of Internet access for up to a year.
ITALY–The Supreme Court approved a verdict by a lower court that allowed ISPs to block The Pirate Bay website, a site that has seen numerous attempts by governments across the globe to block. In October 2011 the Italian government proposed a “wiretapping” bill that would give anyone who thinks he has been offended by content to challenge the website in question. Wikipedia Italy responded in protest by going blank.
DENMARK–Several court rulings have blocked access to sites accused of copyright infringement. These include the Pirate Bay and Allofmp3.com. In the Allofmp3.com case, the court ruled that ISPs are responsible for the traffic they route.
The United Nations Public Administration Network has a good summary of Internet censorship developments in 2011.
CIMA Weekly Digital Roundup
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Around the World
This Spring Breeze Did Not Arise in the West
So here I am, an Arab journalist in Silicon Valley, where four out of every four people I meet believe Facebook invented the Arab Spring. Three more weeks here and I may start to hallucinate that Mark Zuckerberg was a Cairo-slums native named Hassouna El-Fatatri, who rotted in a Mubarak prison for advocating personal privacy rights. (IPS, 12/23)
EGYPT: Egyptian Veteran Blogger Alaa Abdel Fattah Released
Egyptian veteran blogger Alaa Abdel Fattah has finally been released pending investigation from the Cairo Criminal Court yesterday after being detained for 56 days. (Global Voices Advocacy, 12/27)
EGYPT: Eyewitness Accounts of Raid on Civil Society Group in Cairo Posted on Twitter
As my colleagues David D. Kirkpatrick and J. David Goodman report, “Egyptian security forces stormed the offices of 17 nonprofit groups around the country on Thursday, including at least three democracy-promotion groups financed by the United States, as part of what Egypt’s military-led government has said is an investigation into ‘foreign hands’ in the recent outbreak of protests.” (New York Times, 12/29)
RUSSIA: Social Network In-Between Security Services and Free Market
As social networks in Russia like Vkontakte play an ever increasing role in communication between post-election protesters, so too grows the interest of the security services to limit them. This conflict leads to a hard choice: whether Vkontakte should respond to security service requests, or allow its users uncontrolled protest activity. (Global Voices, 12/28)
UNITED STATES: SOPA Is the End of Us, Say Bloggers
The conservative and liberal blogospheres are unifying behind opposition to Congress’s Stop Online Piracy Act, with right-leaning bloggers arguing their very existence could be wiped out if the anti-piracy bill passes. (Politico, 12/28)
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Issues for the New Year
TWITTER: A Dispute Over Who Owns a Twitter Account Goes to Court
How much is a tweet worth? And how much does a Twitter follower cost? (New York Times, 12/25)
AFRICA: 12 predictions for Africa Tech Scene in 2012
It has been a banner year for the Africa technology scene as the world begins to turn to the continent – the Economist Africa rising cover story article was for many, a big validation in the future opportunities as well as challenges for Africa. The best follow up post worth reading is by Professor Juma of the Harvard Kennedy School in the UK Guardian blog, both recognize the importance of the technology scene in supporting Africa’s prosperity. (Afrinnovator, 12/28)
Will 2012 Be the Year of Hypermedia?
Andy Carvin became synonymous with a new form of media curation in 2011, retweeting first-hand accounts of the revolutions in Egypt and its surrounding countries to his tens of thousands of followers. A small group of media visionaries is now working to ensure that the next Andy Carvin won’t be restricted to 140 characters. (GigaOM, 12/28)
How Online Audio Tools Can Help Journalists
First blogs, then Flickr, then YouTube, then Facebook, then Twitter, then Tumblr… If you were told there’s one more thing that you have to be using to survive in journalism, you’d be forgiven for lashing out. But that’s exactly what I’m going to do. (Poynter, 12/29)
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Digital Philosophy
Infinite Stupidity
A tiny number of ideas can go a long way, as we’ve seen. And the Internet makes that more and more likely. What’s happening is that we might, in fact, be at a time in our history where we’re being domesticated by these great big societal things, such as Facebook and the Internet. We’re being domesticated by them, because fewer and fewer and fewer of us have to be innovators to get by. And so, in the cold calculus of evolution by natural selection, at no greater time in history than ever before, copiers are probably doing better than innovators. Because innovation is extraordinarily hard. My worry is that we could be moving in that direction, towards becoming more and more sort of docile copiers. (Edge, 12/15)
Does the Journal Really Matter Anymore?
Following on my previous post, another thought that springs from personal experience and its convergence with someone’s research. If you look at my Google Scholar profile, you will note that in 2011 my citation counts exploded (by social science standards, mind you – in the qualitative social sciences an article with 50 citations or more is pretty huge). Now, part of this is probably a product of my academic maturation – a number of articles now getting attention have been around for 3-4 years, which is about how long it takes for things to work their way into the literature. However, I’ve also seen a surge in a few older pieces that had previously plateaued in terms of citations. This can’t be attributed to a new surge in interest in a particular topic, as these articles cross a range of development issues. However, they all seem to be surging since I got on Twitter and joined the blogosphere. (12/27)
Of Surrogate Futures and Scattered Temporalities
There can be no refuting Michael Edwards’ claim that the world we live in is not only thick with problems, but that the problems that we are collectively trying to address are ‘thick…complex, politicized and unpredictable…complicated and contested’. It is also difficult to disagree with the fact that the solutions we work with, are often too thin, fetishising enumeration of impact more than actual systemic change in areas of intervention. This is what he calls the ‘magic bullet’ approach to accounting for the work we do in a language and framework shaped by neo-liberal and corporate productivity in the age of late-capitalism. (Center for Internet and Society, 12/29)
On Nostalgia
Just last week I was discussing the terrifically interesting work of Michael Sacasas who pens The Frailest Thing, a poetic blog about technology and culture. [see: "Information Revolutions & Cultural / Economic Tradeoffs"] I highly recommend you follow his blog even if you struggle to keep up with his brilliance, as I often do. He posted another great essay today entitled, “Nostalgia: The Third Wave,” in which he discusses the work of the late social critic Christopher Lasch and his work on memory and nostalgia. Go read the entire thing since I cannot possible do it justice here. Anyway, I posted a short comment over there that I thought I would just republish here in case others are interested. I find the issue of nostalgia to be quite interesting. (Technology Liberation Front, 12/29)
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Research
Twitter Beats Facebook (And Everyone Else) As The Most Popular Social Network Of 2011
Twitter received more media coverage than any other social network in 2011, earning around half of all press reportage, beating Facebook into second place, says a new study. (MediaBistro, 12/27)
Broadcasting Board of Governors Fiscal Year 2011 Performance and Accountability Report
Arab Social Media Report
The societal and political transformations sweeping the Arab region have empowered large segments of the region’s population. Many stereotypes have been shattered, with Arab youth, “netizens” and women becoming the main drivers for regional change. Arab women in particular have become more engaged in political and civic actions, playing a critical leading role in the rapid and historic changes that have swept the region. Meanwhile, the debate about the role of social media in these transformations has reached policy making circles at the regional and global levels. (Dubai School of Government, December 2011)
It’s a Social World: Social Networking Leads as Top Online Activity Globally, Accounting for 1 in Every 5 Online Minutes
comScore, Inc. (NASDAQ: SCOR), a leader in measuring the digital world, today released the report It’s a Social World: Top 10 Need-to-Knows About Social Networking and Where It’s Headed. The report analyzes the current state of social networking activity around the globe, providing key insights into how social networking has influenced the digital landscape and implications for marketers operating in this social world. (comScore, 12/21)
CHINA: Presentation on Mapping Chinese Censorship
I recently presented my work on censorship mapping to my colleagues at the OII, including a couple of maps with early analysis of DNS manipulation in Chinese cities. The analysis is very preliminary, and there are a huge number of caveats even for the early results, but here’s the presentation. (Pseudonymity, 12/29)
The New Landscape for Civics and Politics (Especially in Mobile)
SLIDESHOW: Voting Information Technology Summit-GeekNetNYC (Pew Internet, 12/1)
Culturnomics 2.0: Forecasting Large-Scale Human Behavior Using Global News Media Tone in Time and Space
News is increasingly being produced and consumed online, supplanting print and broadcast to represent nearly half of the news monitored across the world today by Western intelligence agencies. Recent literature has suggested that computational analysis of large text archives can yield novel insights to the functioning of society, including predicting future economic events. Applying tone and geographic analysis to a 30–year worldwide news archive, global news tone is found to have forecasted the revolutions in Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya, including the removal of Egyptian President Mubarak, predicted the stability of Saudi Arabia (at least through May 2011), estimated Osama Bin Laden’s likely hiding place as a 200–kilometer radius in Northern Pakistan that includes Abbotabad, and offered a new look at the world’s cultural affiliations. Along the way, common assertions about the news, such as “news is becoming more negative” and “American news portrays a U.S.–centric view of the world” are found to have merit. (First Monday, 9/5)
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Global Censorship Update
View Global Censorship Update – December 2011 in a larger map
