More and more problems with SOPA keep coming up. Michael Geist took a look at the bill from a Canadian perspective and realized that the bill would lead to censorship of Canadian websites as well, thanks to the ridiculous broad manner by which SOPA sets up its censorship mechanism:

It defines “domestic Internet Protocol addresses” — the numeric strings that constitute the actual address of a website or Internet connection — as “an Internet Protocol address for which the corresponding Internet Protocol allocation entity is located within a judicial district of the United States.”

Yet IP addresses are allocated by regional organizations, not national ones. The allocation entity located in the U.S. is called ARIN, the American Registry for Internet Numbers. Its territory includes the U.S., Canada and 20 Caribbean nations. This bill treats all IP addresses in this region as domestic for U.S. law purposes.

To put this in context, every Canadian Internet provider relies on ARIN for its block of IP addresses. In fact, ARIN even allocates the block of IP addresses used by federal and provincial governments. The U.S. bill would treat them all as domestic for U.S. law purposes.

I'm sure supporters of the bill don't mind a little unintended consequences hitting the Canadians, but as a sovereign nation that probably would prefer that other countries don't start poking around with our own sliver of the internet, running roughshod over foreign websites (while pretending they're domestic) seems like setting a dangerous precedent.

Supporters of SOPA keep tossing out Floyd Abrams' name as if it's some talisman, and that his word is final. Last I checked, Floyd Abrams is not the Supreme Court. Indeed, he's not even one of the nine justices. Or a judge at all. And his opinion is just one -- well respected -- lawyer's opinion. In fact, Abrams opinion concerning SOPA isn't even his own unbiased opinion. His opinion was written on behalf of his clients, including the MPAA and other lobbyists in favor of SOPA. And, even then, Abrams still admitted that SOPA would lead to the suppression of protected content. Either way, there are other lawyers out there, many of whom are just as well respected as Mr. Abrams. And when over 100 such lawyers get together and speak out against SOPA, perhaps one might come to the conclusion that Abrams' opinion on the legal aspects is one in the minority. This letter is a followup to the letter sent earlier about PROTECT IP, but noting that SOPA didn't fix any of the problems, and actually made many of them worse:

While there are some differences between SOPA and PROTECT-­IP, nothing in SOPA makes any effort to address the serious constitutional, innovation, and foreign policy concerns that we expressed in that letter. Indeed, in many respects SOPA is even worse than PROTECT-­IP. Among other infirmities, it would:

• Redefine the standard for copyright infringement on the Internet, changing the definition of inducement in a way that would not only conflict with Supreme Court precedent but would make YouTube, Google, and numerous other web sites liable for copyright infringement.
• Allow the government to block Internet access to any web site that "facilitated" copyright or trademark infringement -- a term that the Department of Justice currently interprets to require nothing more than having a link on a web page to another site that turns out to be infringing.
• Allow any private copyright or trademark owner to interfere with the ability of web sites to host advertising or charge purchases to credit cards, putting enormous obstacles in the path of electronic commerce.

Most significantly, it would do all of the above while violating our core tenets of due process. By failing to guarantee the challenged web sites notice or an opportunity to be heard in court before their sites are shut down, SOPA represents the most ill-advised and destructive intellectual property legislation in recent memory.

In sum, SOPA is a dangerous bill. It threatens the most vibrant sector of our economy -- Internet commerce. It is directly at odds with the United States' foreign policy of Internet openness, a fact that repressive regimes will seize upon to justify their censorship of the Internet. And it violates the First Amendment.

But... but... Floyd Abrams!

The failure rate of space programs makes space travel a bit of a risky venture. Sitting on enough explosive materials to escape the Earth's gravity isn't the safest-sounding job, but there are still plenty of willing volunteers to try it. Here are just a few stories on some recent space missions.

• The Russian Phobos-Grunt spacecraft isn't going to make it to Mars -- and some waterbears that were along for the ride won't make it back. Over the last year, about 10% of space missions that launched have failed (seven out of about 74). [url]
• Iran's space program tried to send a monkey to space, but the monkey didn't survive the trip. Iran's space program will probably get a bit more attention when it succeeds... [url]
• Fortunately, the International Space Station will be occupied by astronauts as planned, following a successful launch of a Soyuz re-supply mission. The ISS will resume a full 6-person crew in mid-December. [url]
• To discover more links on space exploration, check out what's floating around in StumbleUpon universe. [url]  

By the way, StumbleUpon can also recommend some good Techdirt articles, too.

There are so many scary parts to SOPA, it's taking some time to pull out all the pieces. One of the scarier parts of SOPA that isn't found in PROTECT IP, is the addition of a form of an "anti-circumvention" rule, which makes it illegal to try to get around any blockade on the US government's blacklist. Like the DMCA's dreadful anti-circumvention clause, this one is also vague and overly broad -- and would create problems for all sorts of legal services. The EFF is listing out some perfectly legal services that would suddenly be in legal crosshairs:

In this new bill, Hollywood has expanded its censorship ambitions. No longer content to just blacklist entries in the Domain Name System, this version targets software developers and distributors as well. It allows the Attorney General (doing Hollywood or trademark holders' bidding) to go after more or less anyone who provides or offers a product or service that could be used to get around DNS blacklisting orders. This language is clearly aimed at Mozilla, which took a principled stand in refusing to assist the Department of Homeland Security's efforts to censor the domain name system, but we are also concerned that it could affect the open source community, internet innovation, and software freedom more broadly:

• Do you write or distribute VPN, proxy, privacy or anonymization software? You might have to build in a censorship mechanism — or find yourself in a legal fight with the United States Attorney General.
• Even some of the most fundamental and widely used Internet security software, such as SSH, includes built-in proxy functionality. This kind of software is installed on hundreds of millions of computers, and is an indispensable tool for systems administration professionals, but it could easily become a target for censorship orders under the new bill.
• Do you work with or distribute zone files for gTLDs? Want to keep them accurate?  Too bad — Hollywood might argue that if you provide a complete (i.e., uncensored) list, you are illegally helping people bypass SOPA orders. 
• Want to write a client-side DNSSEC resolver that uses multiple servers until it finds a valid signed entry? Again, you could be in a fight with the U.S. Attorney General.

This is how the Great Firewall of China works as well -- by threatening service providers who don't help block with the idea that they might be liable if they don't figure out "some way" to block things. Then everyone scrambles to censor well beyond what is required under the law, just to avoid liability. The end result of this will make the internet significantly less secure. VPN providers will go out of business or be severely limited. This is exactly the opposite of the direction we should be moving in.

Security researcher Trevor Eckhart has put out a report suggesting that a ton of Sprint and Verizon Wireless mobile phones have what is effectively a rootkit installed on them. Specifically, he's talking about CarrierIQ, a bit of software intended to monitor device usage, supposedly for the purpose of understanding problems that a user might be having and helping to troubleshoot remotely. The description of the software seems mostly innocuous:

Carrier IQ is used to understand what problems customers are having with our network or devices so we can take action to improve service quality.

It collects enough information to understand the customer experience with devices on our network and how to devise solutions to use and connection problems. We do not and cannot look at the contents of messages, photos, videos, etc., using this tool

However, in digging into the details of the software, Eckhart realized that it can easily track all sorts of info, including what websites people are visiting and what keypresses they make. The software can also surreptitiously report where the phone is located. He further notes that the software is purposely hidden on a bunch of devices, and on many it appears that you simply can't turn it off.

Now, I don't think anyone is suggesting anything nefarious here. There are reasons why operators like to collect this kind of data and, in the aggregate, it seems useful. But, as Eckhart looked in more detail at training materials for the software, he realized it could easily be used to track at a much more granular level, down to individuals. The potential for abuse seems pretty high. Again, it's obvious why this software is installed, but it raises questions about what carriers are doing to make sure the software isn't being abused. It's also somewhat troubling that the carriers aren't all that straightforward about how this software is monitoring their users...

This is a bit odd. Apparently, a judge has ordered a divorcing couple to share each other's Facebook and dating site passwords with each other, as part of the discovery process for the divorce proceedings. As Kash Hill at Forbes notes in writing about this (link above):

In “normal” discovery, a litigant is usually asked to turn over “responsive material” not the keys to access all that material and more...

I honestly can't figure out why that "normal" route wouldn't make sense here. Why require full access to each others' accounts? As Hill also notes, this certainly violates Facebook's terms of service, and it seems odd that a judge would require users to violate the terms of service. It also seems strange since having such access can lead to additional mayhem as well. Beyond just accessing all sorts of content that may not even be relevant for the case, what happens if one of them contacts someone else using the other's account. It just seems to go way beyond what makes sense.

Zauber Paracelsus points us to a Kotaku report of the National Gang Intelligence Center's National Gang Threat Assessment for 2011. Kotaku specifically takes the report to task for its inclusion of Second Life as a tool used by gangs to communicate and recruit. While that in and of itself is pretty funny, the whole section on technology is worth a read for the "what the crap?" moments.

In the key findings of the report (PDF and Embedded Below) the NGIC lays out its primary concern over the technology used by gangs:

Gangs are becoming increasingly adaptable and sophisticated, employing new and advanced technology to facilitate criminal activity discreetly, enhance their criminal operations and connect with other gang members, criminal organizations, and potential recruits nationwide and even worldwide.

Basically, the concern is that the internet has allowed gangs to move outside neighborhoods and cities and spread their influence throughout the world. That can be a concern for law enforcement, but do we really need to worry this much about it?

Gang members routinely utilize the Internet to communicate with one another, recruit, promote their gang, intimidate rivals and police, conduct gang business, showcase illegal exploits, and facilitate criminal activity... Social networking, microblogging, and video-sharing websites - such as Facebook, Youtube, and Twitter - are now more accessible, versatile, and allow tens of thousands of gang members to easily communicate, recruit and form new gang alliances nationwide and world wide.

So here the NGIC lays out some more specific concerns over the use of social networking. Yet, aside from the criminal activity portions of this complaint, the same could be said of any group that is trying to spread its message. Take for instance the recent Occupy Wall Street movement. It started in New York and has now spread throughout the US primarily by the use of the same social network sites listed as used by gangs. Looking further back at the Spring Uprising in the Middle East and Africa, they too used social networking to build their protests. It should really come to no surprise to anyone that the same tools used by peaceful groups would also be employed by gangs and other violent groups.

Luckily, the report does not go as far as suggesting any kind action plan on just what to do about this technology employed by gangs. Based on recent actions in the US, such as that taken by BART, we would probably see more calls for removing anonymity, expanded monitoring capabilities and the ability to shut off such services if they are used by gangs and their members. Much like the attempts to thwart piracy through legislation such as SOPA/PROTECT-IP, such a move will not stop any law breaking group or person from doing what they do. Such a move will only harm the law abiding citizens and groups that rely on such tools for communication. This is a lesson that many people in the government continue to fail to learn.

I've had the privilege of working in two completely different worlds. I worked in technology, employed by Google for six years where I started and led Google Apps for Businesses. Then, I shifted into the movie business by leaving Google and producing a full length movie, Dead Inside, in LA. Our movie hits the market this week -- at a very interesting time with the copyright bill SOPA being debated in Congress.

I was amazed when I learned about the details of SOPA. This bill gives powers to content owners to easily and freely hurt many tech companies and could even go so far as to shut them down completely. Reading this from an entrepreneur's standpoint I immediately go on the defensive and hate it. After reading through the full bill, I finally realized "Wait wait wait...I'm a content owner, I could use this law." This is when I got truly scared.

As a content owner I would have power to send a simple letter to a payment processor accusing a client of theirs of copyright infringement. If the payment processor doesn't cut off a business relationship with my target within five days, they could be dragged into a convoluted legal process. I don't need to consult with a lawyer to do this, which is great because I don't even have one. I certainly can send simple letters out in my free time between takes on the set though. This is too much power for a single movie producer to have and it's way too much for any one else to have. A large tech company could defend itself in court, but small startups don't stand a chance.

The fact that many tech companies are very small and overly susceptible to the impact a simple accusation could have under SOPA is lost on many folks. While I was in LA, people on our set asked me what I did in addition to working the movie. I told them that "some of my time is spent advising tech startups." While a typical response in the Valley would be "Oh wow, which startups?" I was surprised to hear back "Oh, what's a startup?" After discussing this, many people on our set did not understand that most large tech companies start as two guys in a garage with an idea. Their concept of tech companies only included large firms of the world like Google and Apple. Now I understood that when people look at these laws, the concerns of small companies might be ignored because in some minds its obvious that tech companies have large legal arms to defend themselves.

In reality though, most of the large tech companies that exist today were once very small and very fragile. If SOPA was in place, those companies would have never grown up, since the two guys in a garage would have required four lawyers to survive. Dropbox is a perfect example. Created by some college students, the company provides shared online storage space for a fee. Under SOPA, the company would have been cut off from its revenues as soon as a single accusation was made that it was hosting copyrighted material. As a small company this could have been crippling. Today though, I know that Dropbox is one of the most popular tools in the movie industry, since it allows easy sharing of new daily shots, music cues, draft movie posters and more. The innovative tech companies of the future will be extinguished before they have a chance to even get out the door.

With our movie finished and coming onto the market, I'm looking forward to using technology to get our movie out to the world. I want to work with startups that are coming up with new distribution methods. I want to see new abilities to connect with our future fanbase. I want to see more methods of movies getting crowdfunded so viewers get to have more of a say over which movies they want made. Any company that might start solving these problems though would be at risk under SOPA of getting squashed. While my movie could be the one which shows up on those new sites, I already have tools at my disposal (like the DMCA) to deal with it. SOPA allows me to have an easier time protecting my copyrighted material, but the cost is too great.

A couple of weeks ago, Joe Biden gave a perfect, if unintended, explanation for why SOPA and PROTECT IP are such terrible ideas. Since his speech included a bunch of other things, we thought it would be good to highlight Biden's specific arguments that explain why SOPA and PROTECT IP are bad, and to give him kudos for making such statements, since they contradict the statements from Hollywood on this bill. Unfortunately, even with Biden's clear and incontestable statements that show the massive harm that SOPA and PROTECT IP would cause for innovation in the US, this bill still has tremendous momentum in DC, thanks to a strong lobbying push from the legacy entertainment industry. In fact, don't be surprised if Biden totally contradicts himself in a few weeks and pretends that he's all for censoring the internet, harming innovation, and "fixing" what isn't broken on the internet. That's why we're urging folks to support American Censorship Day tomorrow, as the House holds its first hearings ever on how best to censor the internet. Biden's clear explanation of why SOPA & PROTECT IP are so bad should give pause to anyone supporting it -- and will certainly raise serious eyebrows if/when Biden (and the White House) later change positions on these bills. Oh, and if Biden does change positions, let's hold him to it, and make it clear that the American public doesn't appreciate flip flopping politicians, who completely contradict themselves, based on who's supporting what legislation.

While Google has been pretty vocal about its complaints concerning PROTECT IP and SOPA, and Yahoo, LinkedIn and Zynga have expressed concerns elsewhere, the silence of large companies like Facebook, Twitter, eBay, Mozilla and AOL had been unfortunate. That appears to be changing. As a group, they have now all sent a letter to the key sponsors of both bills, arguing that the approach here is the exact wrong approach, and will do significant damage to the parts of the economy that are innovating and creating jobs today:

We are very concerned that the bills as written would seriously undermine the effective mechanism Congress enacted in the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA) to provide a safe harbor for Internet companies that act in good faith to remove infringing content from their sites. Since their enactment in 1998, the DMCA's safe harbor provisions for online service providers have been a cornerstone of the U.S. Internet and technology industry's growth and success. While we work together to find additional ways to target foreign "rogue" sites, we should not jeopardize a foundational structure that has worked for content owners and Internet companies alike and provides certainty to innovators with new ideas for how people create, find, discuss, and share information lawfully online.

We are proud to be a part of an industry that has been crucial to U.S. economic growth and job creation. A recent McKinsey Global Institute report found that the Internet accounts for 3.4% of GDP in the 13 countries that McKinsey studied, and, in the U.S., the Internet's contribution to GDP is even larger. If Internet consumption and expenditure were a sector, its contribution to GDP would be greater than energy, agriculture, communication, mining, or utilities. In addition, the Internet industry has increased productivity for small and medium-sized businesses by 10%. We urge you not to risk either this success or the tremendous benefits the Internet has brought to hundreds of millions of Americans and people around the world.

Can't wait to see the usual commenters stop by to insist that basically every big company on the internet is only saying this because they're dedicated to infringement. But the real question is: at what point does Congress realize that there's real opposition to this bill from one of the few industries out there that's actually doing well these days?

It appears that more and more members of the House are realizing just how bad SOPA is. Joining Reps. Issa and Bachmann, who had previously spoken out about SOPA, a group of ten House members have signed a letter opposing SOPA. The letter was organized by Rep. Anna Eshoo, the leading Democrat on telco & tech -- but whose committee was not involved in the crafting of this bill for reasons that only make sense if the purpose of the bill was to regulate the internet without input from the industry being regulated.

The letter makes the same points many of us have been raising about SOPA. It's way too broad, does not accurately attack the problem it's trying to address, and will create massive liability for the internet & technology -- one of the few sectors growing today, and which has contributed a tremendous amount to economic growth over the past decade. Basically it makes the simple point: stifling the growing tech industry, to appease a Hollywood that refuses to adapt, is no way to go about managing an economy.

Among those who signed onto the letter are Ron Paul, showing that he continues to be internet savvy and recognizes that regulating the internet is a bad, bad idea. Others who signed on include Reps. Jared Polis, Mike Doyle (the man who introduced Girl Talk to Congress), Doris Matsui, Mike Thompson, Lloyd Doggett, Mike Honda, George Miller and Zoe Lofgren (who's been a vocal opponent to these attempts to stifle innovation from day one). We too often speak about politicians who aren't representing the best interests of the public, but it's great to see more and more elected officials recognize that SOPA is a gross overreach by a few big companies who don't want to adapt to a changing marketplace. Kudos to the Congressional Reps here for taking a stand and protecting jobs and innovation.

It's the most unintentionally hilarious video of the year... Viacom has put out one of the most ridiculous "anti-piracy" propaganda videos yet, complete with debunked stats, ridiculous claims, ominous music... and lots and lots of Viacom employees admitting that they're too clueless to adapt to a changing marketplace, and begging you to give them money so they can keep their jobs. Seriously. As the video goes on, the claims get more and more ridiculous, to the point where someone even threatens that if you don't keep buying Viacom products, Spongebob might no longer exist. And, really, that's the hilarious part. So much of the video is just people begging others to save them. They beg people to give them money. They beg the government to save their jobs. Nowhere, however, do they talk about actually adapting. Nowhere do they talk about making use of what the internet provides to build bigger audiences, to promote better, and to better monetize. Because that's the kind of stuff that Viacom just doesn't do. It just begs others to cover up for its own business failures.

Remember, this is the same company where the CEO made $84.5 million last year (a $50 million raise). I'd embed the video here, but remember that Viacom is trying to sue YouTube out of existence, so they didn't put it up on YouTube... in fact, they didn't put it up in a manner that lets you embed it anywhere. So you'll just have to go to Viacom's website and watch the video directly there yourself... costing Viacom's bandwidth. They could have gotten that bandwidth for free if they'd just posted the video to YouTube... but, as we're told in the video, "free" is "stealing." And it destroys jobs. Except for Viacom's CEO. He's doing okay.

We pointed out that the early reviews of Hollywood's new UltraViolet DRM aren't particularly good, but the industry is still pushing forward with the idea. Leading the way is Warner Bros., who is trying to turn the movie-based "social network" it bought a few months ago, Flixster, into the central hub for your movies. The NY Times has an article about it, where it repeatedly claims that the strategy is all about trying to get people to "buy" movies again, rather than just rent them via Netflix of Redbox. Of course, I find this pretty funny, because nothing about UltraViolet is about actually "buying" anything. You're still renting -- and if things ever went to court over, say, your first sale rights to resell a movie you "purchased" using UltraViolet, you can bet that Warner Bros. would be first in line to claim that the license shows you're merely renting the movie, and not buying it. It's just that you're renting it on an open-ended timeline, basically until the studios bail on UltraViolet and shut down the servers.

Rob Pegoraro, in commenting on the article, notes that oddly, the article doesn't even mention DRM in talking about why people don't want to buy from the studios or the fact that it's still much more convenient to get the content by unauthorized means. But that concept still hasn't reached the brain trust at Warner Bros., who seems to insist that as long as you can access the movies you "bought" from anywhere, people will prefer that to file sharing. While it's great that they're at least trying to add benefits, to make it more valuable and worth paying for, the whole thing smacks of someone's father trying to "act cool" for his kids' friends. Warner Bros. still doesn't seem to understand why people like things like Netflix: the convenience. Everything about Ultraviolet sounds inconvenient, and that hardly makes anyone want to "buy."

One of the talking points we've been hearing about SOPA from the lobbyists pushing to get it approved is that the majority of Americans are in favor of the bill, because they want to "protect" intellectual property or jobs. This has never made much sense, since SOPA doesn't protect jobs at all. It destroys them, by hindering one of the few parts of our economy that has been creating jobs -- new and small businesses, particularly in the tech community. Now, the same folks who brought you that incredibly in-depth study on media piracy in emerging markets, have come out with a new report revealing some of their latest research on infringement among Americans. There are a ton of useful data revealed here, but none more timely and key than the following:

56% of people surveyed oppose government involvement in blocking access to infringing material. This number increases to 64% when the term censor is used.

Furthermore, when asked specifically if ISPs, social media sites and search engines should block access to infringing content if it also meant that some legal content would also get blocked (basically the definition of SOPA -- where even the defenders of the bill admit it will block some legal content), only 36% say that's an acceptable form of copyright enforcement.

In other words, a majority Americans are very opposed to the methods and impact of SOPA.

The study also found that, when compelling legal services are around, it can cause a massive decrease in the amount of content obtained through unauthorized means. This isn't a surprise. We've been pointing this out for a while now. And it again shows why SOPA is the exact wrong approach. Instead of actually decreasing infringement, it will increase the burdens and costs for the new businesses who provide those compelling new services. Separately, the report has a whole bunch of other important factoids as well. We've seen a bunch of disputes in the comments about how "common" infringement is. Part of the problem is that it probably depends on how you define it. What this report shows makes a lot of sense: 46% of adults have "bought, copied or downloaded unauthorized music, TV shows or movies." Look at just the 18 to 29 year old demographic, and that number shoots up to 70%. These are the voters of tomorrow, politicians... In most cases, however, it appears to be personal downloading or sharing with friends and family. 75% of people say it's fine to send music files to family members. 70% say that for movies. 56% of people say it's fine to send music to friends. 54% say that about movies. In other words, an awful lot of the "piracy" that's out there is really just friends and family sharing some content. The really "massive" piracy issue is pretty limited. About 2% of adults have huge collections of unauthorized music, and 1% have huge collections of unauthorized films. Furthermore, a much smaller percentage of people think it's okay to upload content to file sharing services or (of course) to sell copies of unauthorized files:
Given all of this, it shouldn't be a surprise that most people think that enforcement should be pretty limited, and not particularly burdensome. From the report:

• Only a slim majority of Americans (52%) support penalties for downloading copyrighted music and movies -- and limit this support to warnings and fines. Other penalties, such as bandwidth throttling and disconnection, receive much lower levels of support.
• Disconnection from the internet, in particular, is very unpopular, with only 16% in favor and 72% of Americans opposed.
• Among those who support fines, 75% support amounts under $100 per song or movie infringed -- hugely undershooting the current statutory penalties.
• For a majority of Americans (54%), due process in such matters requires a court -- not adjudication by private companies.
• Solid majorities of American internet users oppose copyright enforcement when it is perceived to intrude on personal rights and freedoms. 69% oppose monitoring of their internet activity for the purposes of enforcement. 57% oppose blocking or filtering by commercial intermediaries if those measures also block legal content or activity.

So what is there to make from all of this? It appears that our current laws (especially statutory damages) are way out of line with what the majority of Americans think would be appropriate. Furthermore, a ton of people infringe regularly, and especially think nothing's wrong with sharing among family and friends. On top of that, they seem to agree that enforcement is way out of line with the "problem," and certainly don't approve of the types of changes that SOPA is seeking to put in place.

So why are so many in Congress so out of touch with the American public and so focused on passing a law that goes against the wishes of Americans? This is the question Congress should be answering at tomorrow's hearings. The report's author, Joe Karaganis, should be one of the witnesses testifying, rather than a bevy of industry representatives all trotting out unsubstantiated reasons for moving forward with SOPA.

Apparently the folks behind SOPA are really scared to hear from the opposition. We all expected that the Judiciary Committee hearings wouldn't be a fair fight. In Congress, they rarely are fair fights. But most people expected the typical "three in favor, one against" weighted hearings. That's already childish, but it seems that the Judiciary Committee has decided to take the ridiculousness to new heights. We'd already mentioned last week that the Committee had rejected the request of NetCoalition to take part in the hearings. At the time, we'd heard that the hearings were going to be stacked four-to-one in favor of SOPA. However, the latest report coming out of the Committee is that they're so afraid to actually hear about the real opposition that they've lined up five pro-SOPA speakers and only one "against."

Why is the Judiciary Committee so afraid to hear the concerns of the wider internet industry?

The five "pro" speakers are the Register of Copryights, someone from the MPAA, someone from Pfizer, someone from MasterCard, and someone from the AFL-CIO. The choice of MasterCard is deliberate, since Visa is against the bill -- because Visa recognizes that supporting a bill that requires them to cut off customers based on accusations of infringement is going to be a huge burden, and one that isn't good for their own customers.

Furthermore, the "one" against SOPA is going to be Google. This is a strategic choice, because the pro-SOPA folks know that Google is easy to dismiss on this topic, because they'll claim (not accurately) that Google just wants to profit from infringement. Google is already under a lot of scrutiny in Congress, and so it makes it much easier for pro-SOPA supporters to say that "ah, the only opposition is Google." And, yet, that's not true. Companies throughout the tech and internet industries have expressed concerns. Facebook, Twitter, Mozilla, eBay and over 160 startups have all come out against the bill. This isn't "just a Google issue." This is an issue of the entertainment industry trying to change the fundamental legal and technical framework for how the internet has functioned -- and in doing so, creating tons of liability and compliance costs for the part of the economy that is growing and has been creating jobs. Just because Hollywood is jealous, doesn't mean that they should get to use Congress to punish the industry that's doing well.

Either way, it's quite stunning that the Committee has decided to go so far in stacking the deck, and it shows just how unwilling they are to hear the real concerns about the bill.

Want just a glimpse of the future under SOPA, should that bill pass? Over in Denmark, where the local anti-piracy agency Antipiratgruppen has been successful in getting courts to order ISPs to block access to sites like The Pirate Bay, it appears the group is now targeting Grooveshark for a similar blockade. Of course, Grooveshark functions no different than YouTube functions. It obeys the DMCA and takes down content when requested. Users do upload their own music, just as they do on YouTube, and Grooveshark has done some additional licensing deals -- such as with EMI. But apparently, rather than deal with the actual law, the group in Denmark just wants Grooveshark added to the country's blacklist. Apparently, the fact that there's tons of legal music on the site is meaningless, just so long as one group declares that the site is dedicated to infringement. That, of course, is exactly what SOPA will allow as well. Make an accusation and you can totally shut down a competitive startup. In fact, some have responded to this lawsuit by noting that it came after competitor Spotify (which is owned, in part, by the labels) entered the market, suggesting that the timing of the attempted blockade is no surprise, and that's it's really more about clearing the decks for the RIAA's own offering.

You may recall that the US government has been seeking all sorts of info on some folks who were somehow connected to Wikileaks as a part of its grand jury investigation, using the obscure 2703(d) process, rather than a standard subpoena (the 2703(d) process has fewer privacy protections, of course). Last week, a US district court judge, Judge Liam O'Grady, said that Twitter should hand over the info (it's believed that others have already handed over info as well).

It appears that at least one of those whose info is being sought, Icelandic Member of Parliament (MP) Birgitta Jonsdottir is now trying to challenge this in Europe, where privacy protections are much stronger. This could get interesting for a variety of reasons. While the US does not have such privacy laws, many companies in the US agree to abide by the basics of European privacy laws, in order to be allowed to offer service in Europe. It would be interesting to see what happens if the process in Europe says that Twitter can't give up such info without violating European privacy laws. While I don't think they could stop the handing over of the info (US company, US court...), I wonder if there could be further implications for Twitter, in that it may no longer be able to comply with European privacy rules. That might create quite a mess.