GoDaddy not only helped write #SOPA they are also exempt from it.
You may have heard about the mass exodus of customers from GoDaddy due to their support of SOPA. You may have also heard that GoDaddy no longer supports SOPA. The problem is, only one of those things is true. While GoDaddy no longer publicly supports SOPA, that is just a PR move. They have not withdrawn official support for the bill, let alone actually come out in opposition to it. But it gets worse. According to [THIS ARTICLE], not only did GoDaddy help write the damn thing, they are also exempt from complying with the law! (Read more)

Imgur to Boycott GoDaddy Over SOPA Support
(Read more)

http://www.carbonated.tv/biztech/wikipedia-boycotts-godaddy-over-sopa
(Read more)

How to Jump Ship from GoDaddy to a Better Web Host and Registrar
(Read more)

Boycott forces GoDaddy to drop its support for SOPA (Read more)

GoDaddy Boycott Fizzles; Twice As Many Domains Transfer In As Out
(Read more)

List of Companies behind SOPA

List of Companies behind PIPA

In a leaked letter sent to Spain’s outgoing President, the US ambassador to the country warned that as punishment for not passing a SOPA-style file-sharing site blocking law, Spain risked being put on a United States trade blacklist . Inclusion would have left Spain open to a range of “retaliatory options” but already the US was working with the incoming government to reach its goals.

United States government interference in Spain’s intellectual property laws had long been suspected, but it was revelations from Wikileaks that finally confirmed the depth of its involvement.

More than 100 leaked cables showed that the US had helped draft new Spanish copyright legislation and had heavily influenced the decisions of both the government and opposition.

Now, another diplomatic leak has revealed how the US voiced its anger towards outgoing President Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero last month upon realizing that his government was unlikely to pass the US-drafted Sinde (site blocking) Law before leaving office. (Read more)

SOPA, Piracy, Censorship and the End of the Internet? Stephen Kinsella on Freedomain Radio

WTF is SOPA ? aka The American Government trying to ruin the internet

SOPA Versus Free Speech

Koopia pole vargus — remixed (jazz)

1) Starting tonight, Ron Paul will begin winning caucuses. This will be followed by either an assassination, or, in the long term, prosperity. Remember, they killed Bobby Kennedy after he began winning primaries. The chances of this are probably small. I do think there are powerful people and institution who would consider it.

If Ron Paul is assassinated, it’ll be followed by isolated instances of violence against federal institutions. These will be used to discredit anything libertarian. Government will declare new powers for itself, and the gigantic anti-terrorism apparatus will turn its full attention to Americans. An assassination would also be followed by large scale tax protests which would cripple the state. They will resort to printing money and slander tax protesters as domestic terrorists.

If, on the other hand, Ron Paul wins the primary, he will defeat Obama. Democrats will defect en masse to support him. The media mud slingers will realize their impotence. The markets will celebrate, perhaps with the exception of large commercial banks. They will threaten to blow-up the economy as revenge upon a public that elected Ron Paul. We will call their bluff.

2) At least one country will leave the Euro Zone. The EU will remain intact, but calls to end it will grow louder and more insistent. The turmoil in Europe will continue to create the illusion of economic stability in the U.S. and capital will flow away from the headlines, but once things have stabilized there, expect the much bigger and much more destructive problems of the U.S. to resume their unfolding. The prices of precious metals will resume their climb. Let’s hope Ron Paul is in power so the crisis isn’t used to lead us further down the road to serfdom.

3) SOPA, the Stop Online Piracy Act, a thinly veiled attempt to censor the internet will fail. However, it’s proponents will very quickly put another piece of legislation on the table. They will not stop until it is passed.

4) A massive troop reduction will occur in Afghanistan. It will be done for political reasons. The media will spend weeks praising Obama.

5) A galvanizing incident will be provoked or staged in Iran. There will be an outbreak of hostility, but the United States, despite the propaganda from neo-con politicians and the media will not fully commit to a war.

See also, predictions for:
2011
2010
2009
2008

News Corp. honcho Rupert Murdoch threw his weight behind Congress’ attempt to restrict the Internet, personally lobbying leaders on Capitol Hill Wednesday for two measures that purport to combat piracy.

Murdoch’s media empire is among some 350 large corporations that have come out in favor of the Stop Online Piracy Act in the House, as well as the Protect IP Act in the Senate.

Both measures would require Internet operators to police activity online, and would mandate Internet giants like Google and AOL (the parent company of The Huffington Post and an opponent of the bills) and credit card companies to take down sites that have content deemed to be in violation of copyright rules.

The battle has pitted huge content generators like Disney and the motion picture industry against their online competitors, with each side reportedly spending some $90 million on lobbying efforts. (Read more)

Thousands of fake Twitter accounts are being used to drown out activists and bloggers protesting the recent presidential elections in Russia. 



Widespread reports of ballot stuffing and voting irregularities prompted thousands of Russians to demonstrate in Moscow’s wintry Triumfalnaya Square. Hundreds were subsequently arrested by Russian security forces, including well-known anti-corruption blogger Alexei Navalny.

Kremlin Twitter ‘bots target Russian oppositionProtestors began tweeting anti-Kremlin sentiments using the hashtag #триумфальная (Triumfalnaya), which quickly became one of the most-used hashtags on Twitter. 



But as Maxim Goncharov, a senior threat researcher at Trend Micro notes, it wasn’t long before #Triumfalnaya messages were drowned out by loud, pro-Kremlin tweets trumpeted by countless Twitter bots. 



“If you check this hash tag on twitter you’ll see a flood of 5-7 identical tweets from accounts that have been inactive for month and that only had 10-20 tweets before this day,” said Goncharov.



“To this point those hacked accounts have already posted 10-20 more tweets in just one hour. Whether the attack was supported officially or not is not relevant, but we can now see how social media has become the battlefield of a new war for freedom of speech.” (Read more)

Head of Russia’s only political watchdog detained as elections begin The head of Russia’s only independent political watchdog was held at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport on Saturday as elections in the world’s biggest country began, The Associated Press reported. (Read more)

Independent Russian Websites Hacked, Disabled On Election Day Suspected hackers shut down several Russian websites that provide independent election data, making state-controlled media one of the few widely accessible sources of information about today’s parliamentary vote. (Read more)

Media Pressured Before Elections Reporters Without Borders said Thursday that it compiled a list of recent freedom of information violations that shows “that no methods are being spared to bolster strongman Vladimir Putin and promote unanimous acclaim for his decision to run again for the presidency.”

The most telling example is the crackdown on Golos, the country’s only independent elections observer organization, which became the target of a concerted campaign by authorities and certain media this week.

This Friday night, Gazprom-controlled television channel NTV, will air a 30-minute investigative piece on Golos, questioning the organization’s objectivity on grounds that it is financed by U.S. grants….

Other incidents this week include censorship accusations against RIA-Novosti, the country’s biggest state-owned news agency, and fresh denial-of-service attacks against LiveJournal, the country’s biggest blogging platform. (Read more)

Vladimir Putin set to lose majority amid complaints of electoral violations Kadyrov, the brutal leader of the federal republic of Chechnya, said that 99.51% of its voters backed United Russia, out of a 94% turnout; in the past it has been reported as 100%, while he himself had promised “more than 100%” this time. (Read more)

Russia PM Vladimir Putin accuses US over poll protests Mr Putin said US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton “set the tone for some opposition activists”.

She “gave them a signal, they heard this signal and started active work”, he said. (Read more)

The following psychopaths have sponsored the bill:

Mark Amodei [R-NV2]
John Barrow [D-GA12]
Karen Bass [D-CA33]
Howard Berman [D-CA28]
Marsha Blackburn [R-TN7]
Mary Bono Mack [R-CA45]
John Carter [R-TX31]
Steven Chabot [R-OH1]
John Conyers [D-MI14]
Ted Deutch [D-FL19]
Elton Gallegly [R-CA24]
Robert Goodlatte [R-VA6]
Tim Griffin [R-AR2]
Peter King [R-NY3]
Ben Luján [D-NM3]
Thomas Marino [R-PA10]
Alan Nunnelee [R-MS1]
William Owens [D-NY23]
Dennis Ross [R-FL12]
Steve Scalise [R-LA1]
Adam Schiff [D-CA29]
Lee Terry [R-NE2]
Debbie Wasserman Schultz [D-FL20]
Melvin Watt [D-NC12]
Introduced by: Lamar Smith [R-TX]

The following companies support it:

adidas/Nike/Reebok, Autodesk, Bose, Caterpillar, CBS/NBC, Comcast, CVS, Dolby, EA/Nintendo, Ford, GMAT, L’Oréal, MLB/NBA/NFL/NHL/UFC, Monster cable (overpriced junk anyways), Oakley, Pfizer, Rite Aid, Rolex, Rosetta Stone, McGraw-Hill, Sony, Wal-Mart, Xerox, The Timberland Company, Walt Disney, Tiffany & Co. and, of course, MPAA/RIAA/Viacom/Time Warner (among others)

Wary Of SOPA, Reddit Users Aim To Build A New, Censorship-Free Internet
Users of the social news and community site Reddit don’t like the way the government seems to be muscling in on the Internet. So they plan to build a new one.

Redditors have flocked over the last week to a new subgroup on Reddit.com they’re calling the Darknet Plan–or sometimes Meshnet, as the name seems to still be in flux–with the aim of building a mesh-based version of the Internet that wouldn’t be subject to the control of any corporation or government, with a focus on anonymity, peer-to-peer architecture and strong resistance to censorship.

In the last few days, about 10,000 users have joined the group, and about 200,000 have visited, according to Chris Bresee, the 17-year old Vermonter who founded the project and goes by the name “Wolfeater” on the site. Bresee, a high school senior, created the Darknet Plan more than a year ago, but he attributes the sudden spike in interest to the Stop Online Piracy Act and the awareness of the possibilities of government censorship that the bill has created: If passed in its current form, SOPA would use Domain Name System filtering to effectively disappear infringing sites from the Internet. “I would say the Darknet Plan is driven almost in its entirety by fear of censorship coming out of Congress,” says Bresee, whose Vermont senator Patrick Leahy introduced the precursor to SOPA known as Protect-IP.”That’s what’s driven me, and I think that’s what’s driven the other ten thousand users to join.” (Read more)

The U.S. joins China in censoring the Internet
The Senate passed an act recently called the Protect IP Act but then, just as quickly, a Senator from Oregon, Ron Wyden, put the bill on hold because as he said, it would “muzzle speech and stifle innovation and economic growth.”

The latest piece of internet blacklist legislation, known as the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in the House of Representatives, was introduced by the House Judiciary Committee Chairman Lamar Smith (R-Tex.) who claims it is for the purpose of shutting down foreign sites that post intellectual property created by U.S. firms, goes even further than the Protect IP Act.

The act would allow the US Justice Department powers to punish and shut down websites, both in the U.S. and anywhere in the world and go after companies that provide support for them, either technically or through payment systems

The US and the West have long criticized China for stifling dissent and for censorship but now they are not only joining China but they are taking censorship even further and attempting to censor the whole world.

The international implications of SOPA are worrying for as experts claim: it appears that the US is taking control of the entire world. The definitions written in the bill are so broad that any US user who uses a website overseas immediately gives the US the power to potentially take action against it and enable them to force ISPs to DNS-block any foreign site.

On a global scale it grants the U.S. Government far-reaching powers to go after Web sites which it claims are hosting copyrighted content. (Read more)

Julian P. Heicklen, a 79-year-old retired chemistry professor, has often stood on a plaza outside the United States Courthouse in Manhattan, holding a “Jury Info” sign and handing out brochures that advocate jury nullification, the controversial view that if jurors disagree with a law, they may ignore their oaths to follow it and may acquit a defendant who violated it.

Then, last year, federal prosecutors had Mr. Heicklen indicted, charging that his activity violated the law against jury tampering.

. . . .

“No legal system could long survive,” they added, “if it gave every individual the option of disregarding with impunity any law which by his personal standard was judged morally untenable.” (Read more)

EU Considers Ban on Country Ratings

This week alone has seen a ratings downgrade for Spain as well as a threat by agencies to review France’s AAA status — and the markets have taken notice. Once again, it would seem, ratings agencies are making things difficult for European countries.

Now, the European Union is considering doing something about it.

European Internal Market Commissioner Michel Barnier is considering a move to ban the agencies from publishing outlook reports on EU countries entangled in a crisis, according to a report in Thursday’s issue of the Financial Times Deutschland newspaper.

In an internal draft of a reform to an EU law applying to ratings agencies obtained by the paper, Barnier proposes providing the new EU securities authority, the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA), with the right to “temporarily prohibit” the publication of forecasts of a country’s liquidity. (read more)

Un-flipping believable.

In a frightening example of how the state is tightening its grip around the free Internet, it has emerged that You Tube is complying with thousands of requests from governments to censor and remove videos that show protests and other examples of citizens simply asserting their rights, while also deleting search terms by government mandate.

The latest example is You Tube’s compliance with a request from the British government to censor footage of the British Constitution Group’s Lawful Rebellion protest, during which they attempted to civilly arrest Judge Michael Peake at Birkenhead county court. (Read more)

The U.S. State Department responded Tuesday to the new anti-boycott law passed in Israel, saying that the freedom to organize and protest is a democratic value Israel and the U.S. have long shared.

. . . .

When asked to comment on the anti-boycott law, the U.S. State Department said the law was an “Israeli internal matter” but also hinted its criticism by pointing out the right to peaceful protest in democratic countries.

. . . .

J Street condemned the Knesset’s passage of the bill as well as a “clear and unabashed violation of the fundamental democratic precept of freedom of speech.”

According to newly passed law, a person or an organization calling for the boycott of Israel, including the settlements, can be sued by the boycott’s targets without having to prove that they sustained damage. The court will then decide how much compensation is to be paid. (Read more from haaretz.com)