Senator Lamar Smith, lead sponsor of the currently dead SOPA bill you’ve heard so much about, has another bill in the works that uses Child Pornography as a screen to push through an amendment that’ll have your internet service provider tracking all of your financial dealings online. Each time you use a credit card, each time you read your bank statement, all of your IP information and your search history will be required by your ISP to be stored for 18 months at all times. This bill is H.R. 1981 and will have more dire consequences than SOPA or PIPA ever had the potential to have.

What it does is to amend several rules that have to do with Child Pornography and preventing it, the bill itself called the “Protecting Children From Internet Pornographers Act of 2011.” What it also does is to change the U.S. code Chapter 18 section 2703 Required Disclosure of Customer Communications or Records to include a requirement that your internet service provider do the following:

A commercial provider of an electronic communication service shall retain for a period of at least one year a log of the temporarily assigned network addresses the provider assigns to a subscriber to or customer of such service that enables the identification of the corresponding customer or subscriber information under subsection (c)(2) of this section.

While it was legal for the government to issue a subpoena for the viewing of the information they speak about here before, it was not part of the law that internet service providers capture or retain that information at any point. In effect, while before the authorities would need to first find a reason for you to need to be watched to get the ISP to start collecting information from you, that information will already exist on file, effectively meaning you’re being watched and recorded even if you’ve done nothing wrong.

Don’t worry though, there’s an additional set of lines that should placate you because it’s so very kind of them to think of:

(1) to encourage electronic communication service providers to give prompt notice to their customers in the event of a breach of the data retained pursuant to section 2703(h) of title 18 of the United States Code, in order that those effected can take the necessary steps to protect themselves from potential misuse of private information; and

(2) that records retained pursuant to section 2703(h) of title 18, United States Code, should be stored securely to protect customer privacy and prevent against breaches of the records.

So don’t worry, your information will be “stored securely” so noone else can access it! But if they do access it, your ISP will give you “prompt notice” so you can change all your credit card numbers, hide your kids, hide your wife, and hide your husband. This bill has currently cleared its committee, this meaning that the next step is a full vote. This bill needs to be stopped, and if I might go one better, Lamar Smith needs to be stopped, for the good of the internet and YOUR privacy.

(source) http://www.slashgear.com/sopa-sponsor-has-another-internet-bill-that-records-you-247-20210264/

bill : http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/BILLS-112hr1981ih/pdf/BILLS-112hr1981ih.pdf

after sopa being shelved the fbi arrested megaupload.com staff and shut down the website,which caused the biggest retaliation in history when over 6000 people ddos’d the sites of many goverment organizations and copyright supporters dubbed #opmegaupload

SOPA Derailed

By Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols | January 16, 2012, 8:50am PST

Summary: According to a prominent U.S. Congressman, SOPA will not come up for a vote and is, thus, effectively dead, but PIPA remains active in the Senate.

Darrel Issa, Congressman, announces that SOPA won’t get to the House’s floor for a vote.

Darrell Issa, Congressman, announced that SOPA won’t get to the House floor for a vote.

U.S. House Judiciary Committee Member Congressman Darrell Issa (R-CA), and Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) opponent has announced that he has been assured by House Majority Leader Eric Cantor has promised him that he will not bring the bill to the floor. That mean, for all practical intents and purposes, that SOPA is dead.

In a press release Issa announced that he was canceling his Wednesday hearing on “the impact of Domain Name Service (DNS) and search engine blocking on the Internet, has been postponed following assurances that anti-piracy legislation will not move to the House floor this Congress without a consensus.”

Issa said, “Majority Leader Cantor has assured me that we will continue to work to address outstanding concerns and work to build consensus prior to any anti-piracy legislation coming before the House for a vote.” Without the Majority Leader’s support, SOPA won’t get to the House’s floor, it will not be voted on, and this makes it essentially dead.

Why did the House reverse its course? According to Issa on Twitter, first the Internet protests had a big impact. “The House of Reps heard your #stopsopa message loud and clear.” And, in a rare bipartisan move in our current political climate, Issa tweeted, “Great news folks: #SOPA will not move in the House of Reps” citing President Obama’s anti-SOPA statement.

This isn’t the end of the story, though, Issa continued, “While I remain concerned about Senate action on the Protect IP Act [PIPA], I am confident that flawed legislation will not be taken up by this House.” “The voice of the Internet community has been heard. Much more education for Members of Congress about the workings of the Internet is essential if anti-piracy legislation is to be workable and achieve broad appeal.” Therefore, “the focus of protecting the Internet needs to be on the Senate where Majority Leader Reid has announced his intention to try to move similar legislation in less than two weeks.”

In his announcement, Issa concluded that he intends to continue to push for Congress to heed the advice of Internet experts on anti-piracy legislation and to push for the consideration and passage of the bipartisan OPEN Act, which provides an alternative means for protecting intellectual property rights without undermining the structure and entrepreneurialism of the Internet. You can learn more about Rep. Issa and Sen. Ron Wyden’s alternative, the OPEN Act at its Web site

Related Stories:

White House releases statement against SOPA; asks for refined legislation this year

Hate SOPA and want to join the Jan. 18 blackout? There’s a WordPress plugin for that

DNS provision pulled from SOPA, victory for opponents

Reddit’s anti-SOPA “Nuclear” protest is a good start

Should Amazon, Google & Wikipedia “nuke” the Web to stop SOPA?

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/networking/sopa-derailed/1897

All About SOPA, the Bill That Wants to Cripple Your Internet Very Soon

SOPA, or the Stop Online Piracy Act, is another one of those bills that sounds like it’s going to do something mildly positive but, in reality, has serious potential to negatively change the internet as we know it. It puts power in the hands of the entertainment industry to censor sites that allegedly “engage in, enable or facilitate” copyright infringement. This language vague enough to encompass sites you use every day, like Twitter and Facebook, making SOPA a serious problem. Here’s how it works and what you can do about it.

SOPA’s coming to a vote very soon. In fact, it was supposed to come to a vote today but was delayed, likely because of all the pushback. Reddit users have already started compiling a list of the IP addresses of popular sites in case SOPA passes and access will be restricted within the United States. A decision is going to be made soon, so if you still don’t know what SOPA is or haven’t done anything to stop it, read on to learn how you can help beat the bill.
How Does SOPA Work, and Why Should I Care?

The idea behind SOPA sounds reasonable. It came about in order to try to snuff out piracy online, as the entertainment industry is obviously not excited about the many people downloading their product without their permission. The issue is, however, that it doesn’t really matter whether you’re in support of piracy, against it, or just don’t care. SOPA makes it possible for companies to block the domain names of web sites that are simple capable of, or seem to encourage copyright infringement.

All About SOPA, the Bill That Wants to Cripple Your Internet Very SoonThis means that if Lifehacker happened to have an article or two that could be interpreted as piracy-friendly, our domain could be blocked so it’s unaccessible by visiting lifehacker.com. What the bill can’t do is block numeric IP addresses, so you could still access Lifehacker, or any other site that could be censored, if you knew that address. This is important because it means this bill can’t do much to stop downloaders of pirated content. If a domain name is blocked, everything will still work via the numeric IP address. Basically, the bill will be no good at stopping piracy—what it was apparently designed to do—but excellent at censoring any web site capable of providing its users with the means of promoting pirated content or allowing the process. This includes sites like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Tumblr, and many more. If it’s possible to post pirated content on the site, or information that could further online piracy, a claim can be brought against it. This can be something as minor as you posting a copyrighted image to your Facebook page, or piracy-friendly information in the comments of a post such as this one. The vague, sweeping language in this bill is what makes it so troubling.

In the event of SOPA-based censorship, any site can submit an appeal so long as they do so within five days. This isn’t a lot of time to handle a legal matter, and if you’ve ever dealt with a copyright infringement takedown notice you know how ineffective an appeal can be. When a threat of legal action is posed, a company is generally going to prefer to err on the side of caution and remove infringing content indefinitely. It’s far cheaper to run the risk of removing perfectly legal content than to battle the issue in court. If your web host censors your site because of a SOPA-based claim, you can expect the same sorts of problems.

If you want to learn more about how SOPA works, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) posted a great overview. You can also view the exact contents of SOPA. For a quick overview, be sure to watch the video at the top of this post.
What Can I Do About SOPA?

Currently Twitter, Google, Reddit, Kickstarter, Tumblr, Mozilla, Yahoo, AOL, eBay, Zynga, Facebook, and several other sites have spoken out in opposition of SOPA. If you’d like to as well, there are a couple of things you can do.

Full size
First, call your congressperson on the phone. This is especially important if you live in Texas, Michigan, Vermont, or Iowa. You can also send a letter to your congressperson by visiting the American Censorship Day web site. To activate the contact widget, you have to click the “Try it out” link that’s wedged between two screenshots of a censored logo and the “Website Blocked” widget you’re trying to open. This will provide you with a form and allow you to send a letter.

Second, get the word out. Post this article, the American Censorship Day web site, or any other information about SOPA on your social media accounts. Send emails to friends and family. If you oppose the bill, help others to understand why they should oppose it as well.

SOPA is on the fast track, so if you want to fight it you need to do so today. We do, however, recommend you get to know the bill so you you can make an informed decision regarding how you feel about it.

http://lifehacker.com/5860205/all-about-sopa-the-bill-thats-going-to-cripple-your-internet

The passing of the Stop Online Piracy Act, or SOPA, could very well scrub the Internet clean of any content that the US government considers questionable.

The massively popularly website Reddit is well aware of these implications and is ready to show the world just what harm SOPA could do to the Internet.

On January 18, Reddit, a user-generated aggregator of content contributed by all corners of the Internet, will black out their own site in protest of SOPA. For an online hub that snags up around 2 billion hits every month, a lot of traffic and ad revenue stands to be lost during the 12-hour span. For the administrators of the site, though, they are running short on finding ways to fight the legislation.

Advocates against SOPA have rallied in Washington and across the country and Internet since a congressional committee began drafting the Act. Under the legislation, websites and people that post or share third-party content could be crushed with heavy fines and imprisoned for the distribution of knowledge. While opposition has existed ever since the terrifying realities of SOPA made its way to the Web, the ban by way of Reddit stands to be the biggest and only protest of its kind so far.

On January 18, Reddit announced that “Instead of the normal glorious, user-curated chaos,” the site will suspend its content and instead post a message about the dangers of both SOPA and the Protect IP Act, a sister legislator of sorts about to go before the US Senate. The site will also post a live stream of the House hearing that will discuss SOPA, which Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian will be testifying at.

“The freedom, innovation, and economic opportunity that the Internet enables is in jeopardy,” reads an official post published by Reddit administrators on their site. “Congress is considering legislation that will dramatically change your Internet experience and put an end to Reddit and many other sites you use every day. Internet experts, organizations, companies, entrepreneurs, legal experts, journalists and individuals have repeatedly expressed how dangerous this bill is. If we do nothing, Congress will likely pass the Protect IP Act (in the Senate) or the Stop Online Piracy Act (in the House), and then the president will probably sign it into law. There are powerful forces trying to censor the Internet, and a few months ago many people thought this legislation would surely pass. However, there’s a new hope that we can defeat this dangerous legislation.”

Reddit users have rallied for other causes online as of late, attracting thousands of comments over such issues as the National Defense Authorization Act. Shutting down their own sight for the sake of protest, though, is a rare move for Reddit.

“Blacking out Reddit is a hard choice, but we feel focusing on a day of action is the best way we can amplify the voice of the community,” add site administrators. Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols at ZDNet agrees, and acknowledges that Reddit already is the leading social network opposed to SOPA and calls the site a “hotbed” for organizing protests. Many users of the site supported a recent campaign against domain registrar GoDaddy after the company offered their support for SOPA. Though the registrar later rescinded their support for SOPA, a campaign largely amplified by Reddit yielded thousands of account cancellations on GoDaddy.

Other major sites that have rallied against supporters of SOPA include WikiLeaks, which cancelled all of its GoDaddy domains in opposition to their initial alignment with the legislation. Some fear though that it will take much more than just a handful of major sites to make a stink bad enough for Congress to second-guess SOPA.

“Chances are if you’re a regular Reddit user, you’re either tech savvy enough to know the dangers of SOPA, or if not, you’ve at least been reading about it on the site’s front page for months,” writes Paul Tassi on Forbes. “Rather, even though Reddit is a massive site, the industry needs a nuclear option to truly decimate SOPA once and for all. Titans like Google and Facebook need to have a similar blackout, which would reach an audience far, far wider than Reddit’s.”

Tassi adds that Reddit’s maneuver is a good first step, but others must fall in line if they want to ensure a success.

“A blackout of the internet’s biggest sites would seal the deal automatically, and we could be free of this nonsense for good,” writes Tassi.

from:http://news.cnet.com/8301-31921_3-57329001-281/how-sopa-would-affect-you-faq/?tag=mncol;txt

When Rep. Lamar Smith announced the Stop Online Piracy Act in late October, he knew it was going to be controversial.

But the Texas Republican probably never anticipated the broad and fierce outcry from Internet users that SOPA provoked over the last few months. It was a show of public opposition to Internet-related legislation not seen since the 2003 political wrangling over implanting copy-protection technology in PCs, or perhaps even the blue ribbons appearing on Web sites in the mid-1990s in response to the Communications Decency Act.

As CNET reported in December, Smith, a self-described former ranch manager whose congressional district encompasses the cropland and grazing land stretching between Austin and San Antonio, Texas, has become Hollywood’s favorite Republican. The TV, movie, and music industries are the top donors to his 2012 campaign committee, and he’s been feted by music and movie industry lobbyists at dinners and concerts.

To learn how SOPA, and its Senate cousin known as the Protect IP Act, would affect you, keep reading. CNET has compiled a list of frequently asked questions on the topic:

Q: What’s the justification for SOPA and Protect IP?
Two words: rogue sites.

That’s Hollywood’s term for Web sites that happen to be located in a nation more hospitable to copyright infringement than the United States is (in fact, the U.S. is probably the least hospitable jurisdiction in the world for such an endeavor). Because the target is offshore, a lawsuit against the owners in a U.S. court would be futile.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, in a letter to the editor of The New York Times, put it this way: “Rogue Web sites that steal America’s innovative and creative products attract more than 53 billion visits a year and threaten more than 19 million American jobs.” The MPAA has a section of its Web site devoted to rogue Web sites. Jim Hood, the Democratic attorney general of Mississippi, and co-chair of a National Association of Attorneys General committee on the topic, recently likened rogue Web sites to child porn.

Who’s opposed to SOPA?
Much of the Internet industry and a large percentage of Internet users. Here’s the most current list (PDF) of opponents.

On November 15, Google, Facebook, Twitter, Zynga, eBay, Mozilla, Yahoo, AOL, and LinkedIn wrote a letter to key members of the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives, saying SOPA poses “a serious risk to our industry’s continued track record of innovation and job creation, as well as to our nation’s cybersecurity.” Yahoo has reportedly quit the U.S. Chamber of Commerce over the organization’s enthusiastic support for SOPA.

The European Parliament adopted a resolution last week stressing “the need to protect the integrity of the global Internet and freedom of communication by refraining from unilateral measures to revoke IP addresses or domain names.” Rep. Nancy Pelosi, the House Democratic leader, said in a message on Twitter last week that we “need to find a better solution than #SOPA.”

A letter signed by Reps. Zoe Lofgren and Anna Eshoo, both California Democrats, and
Rep. Ron Paul, the Republican presidential candidate from Texas, predicts that SOPA will invite “an explosion of innovation-killing lawsuits and litigation.” Law professors have also raised concerns. And yes, there is a protest song.

How would SOPA work?
It allows the U.S. attorney general to seek a court order against the targeted offshore Web site that would, in turn, be served on Internet providers in an effort to make the target virtually disappear. It’s kind of an Internet death penalty.

More specifically, section 102 of SOPA says that, after being served with a removal order:

A service provider shall take technically feasible and reasonable measures designed to prevent access by its subscribers located within the United States to the foreign infringing site (or portion thereof) that is subject to the order…Such actions shall be taken as expeditiously as possible, but in any case within five days after being served with a copy of the order, or within such time as the court may order.

How is SOPA different from the earlier Senate bill called the Protect IP Act?
Protect IP targeted only domain name system providers, financial companies, and ad networks–not companies that provide Internet connectivity.

Because SOPA is broader, even some companies who liked, or at least weren’t vocally opposed to, the Senate bill aren’t exactly delighted with the House version.

“Verizon continues to look at SOPA, and while it’s fair to say that we have concerns about the legislation, we are working with congressional staff to address those concerns,” a representative told us.

Tim McKone, AT&T’s executive vice president of federal relations, said that “we have been supportive of the general framework” of the Senate bill. But when it comes to SOPA, all AT&T would say is that it is “working constructively with Chairman Smith and others toward a similar end in the House.”

What are the security-related implications of SOPA?
One big one is how it interacts with the domain name system and a set of security improvements to it known as DNSSEC.

The idea of DNSSEC is to promote end-to-end encryption of domain names, meaning there’s no break in the chain between, say, Wellsfargo.com and its customer. Requiring Internet providers to redirect allegedly piratical domain names to, say, the FBI’s servers isn’t compatible with DNSSEC.

Rep. Dan Lungren, who heads the Homeland Security subcommittee on cybersecurity, has said that an “unintended consequence” of SOPA would be to “undercut” the effort his panel has been making to promote DNSSEC.

The Sandia National Laboratories, part of the U.S. Department of Energy, has also raised concerns about SOPA, saying it is “unlikely to be effective” and will “negatively impact U.S. and global cybersecurity and Internet functionality.” And Stewart Baker, the former policy chief at the Department of Homeland Security who’s now in private practice, warned in an op-ed that SOPA “runs directly counter” to the House’s own cybersecurity efforts.

An analysis (PDF) of Protect IP prepared by five Internet researchers this spring lists potential security problems. Among them: it’s “incompatible” with DNSSEC, innocent Web sites will be swept in as “collateral damage,” and the blacklist can be bypassed by using the numeric Internet address of a Web site. The address for CNET.com, for instance, is currently 64.30.224.118.

What will SOPA require Internet providers to do?
A little-noticed portion of the proposed law, which CNET highlighted in an article, goes further than Protect IP and could require Internet providers to monitor customers’ traffic and block Web sites suspected of copyright infringement.

“It would cover IP blocking,” says Markham Erickson, head of NetCoalition, whose members include Amazon.com, Google, eBay, and Yahoo. “I think it contemplates deep packet inspection” as well, he said.

The exact requirements will depend on what the removal order says. The Recording Industry Association of America says that SOPA could be used to force Internet providers to block by “Internet Protocol address” and deny “access to only the illegal part of the site.” It would come as no surprise if copyright holders suggested wording to the Justice Department, which would in turn seek a judge’s signature on the removal order.

Deep packet inspection, meaning forcing an Internet provider to intercept and analyze customers’ Web traffic, is the only way to block access to specific URLs.

Smith’s revised version (PDF) may limit the blocking requirement to DNS blocking. Its “safe harbor” language indicates that not resolving “the domain name of the foreign infringing site” may be sufficient, but some ambiguity remains.

Are there free speech implications to SOPA?
SOPA’s opponents say so–a New York Times op-ed called it the “Great Firewall of America–and the language of the bill itself is quite broad. Section 103 says that, to be blacklisted, a Web site must be “directed” at the U.S. and also that the owner “has promoted” acts that can infringe copyright.

Here’s how Section 101 of the original version of SOPA defines what a U.S.-directed Web site is:

(A) the Internet site is used to provide goods or services to users located in the United States;
(B) there is evidence that the Internet site or portion thereof is intended to offer or provide such goods and services (or) access to such goods and services (or) delivery of such goods and services to users located in the United States;
(C) the Internet site or portion thereof does not contain reasonable measures to prevent such goods and services from being obtained in or delivered to the United States; and
(D) any prices for goods and services are indicated or billed in the currency of the United States.

Some critics have charged that such language could blacklist the next YouTube, Wikipedia, or WikiLeaks. Especially in the case of WikiLeaks, which has posted internal documents not only from governments but also copyrighted documents from U.S. companies and has threatened to post more, it’s hard to see how it would not qualify for blacklisting.

Laurence Tribe, a high-profile Harvard law professor and author of a treatise titled American Constitutional Law, has argued that SOPA is unconstitutional because, if enacted, “an entire Web site containing tens of thousands of pages could be targeted if only a single page were accused of infringement.”

What has the response to this language been?
Mozilla, which makes the Firefox Web browser, responded by creating a page saying: “Protect the Internet: Help us stop the Internet Blacklist Legislation.” It warns that “your favorite Web sites both inside and outside the US could be blocked based on an infringement claim.”

Web sites including Wikimedia (as in, Wikipedia) charged that SOPA is an “Internet blacklist bill” that “would allow corporations, organizations, or the government to order an Internet service provider to block an entire Web site simply due to an allegation that the site posted infringing content.” Tumblr “censored” its users’ content streams, and reported that its users averaged 3.6 calls per second to Congress through the company’s Web site–nearly 90,000 total.

With a bit of HTML from AmericanCensorship.org, a Web site supported by the Free Software Foundation, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and Public Knowledge, hundreds of Web sites “censored” themselves to protest SOPA. Even Lofgren, from Silicon Valley, has joined the fight-censorship protest.

For their part, the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) has been highlighting an analysis it commissioned from First Amendment lawyer Floyd Abrams, a former MPAA attorney, who concluded SOPA is perfectly constitutional. Here’s another pro-SOPA rebuttal.

Who supports SOPA?
The three organizations that have probably been the most vocal are the MPAA, the Recording Industry Association of America, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. A Politico chart shows that Hollywood has outspent Silicon Valley by about tenfold on lobbyists in the last two years. Here’s a CNET article on why the Chamber is so pro-SOPA.

Supporters publicized letters from the National Fraternal Order of Police and the International Association of Fire Fighters lending their weight to the Web-blocking idea. Here are more statements from supporters at the time of SOPA’s introduction. And the AFL-CIO sent a representative to testify in support of SOPA at last week’s House hearing.

Over 400 businesses and organizations have sent a letter supporting SOPA.

And in the U.S. Congress?
Support for Protect IP is remarkably broad, and for SOPA a little less so. An analysis by the RIAA says that of some 1,900 bills that have been introduced in the Senate, only 18 other bills enjoy the same number of bipartisan cosponsors as Protect IP does.

That puts it in the top 1 percent of most-popular bills, at least for this measurement of congressional enthusiasm. Of Protect IP’s sponsors in the Senate, over 60 percent are Democrats.

Here’s the list of Senate sponsors of Protect IP–the total is 40 senators. SOPA has only 24 cosponsors, but it hasn’t been around as long. Rep. Darrell Issa, a California Republican, has introduced the so-called OPEN Act that would cut off the flow of funds to alleged pirate Web sites without requiring them to be blocked.

Would SOPA block Tor?
Perhaps. In an echo of the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act’s anticircumvention section, SOPA targets anyone who “knowingly and willfully provides or offers to provide a product or service designed or marketed by such entity…for the circumvention or bypassing” of a Justice Department-erected blockade.

Legal scholars contacted by CNET said Tor could qualify as a “circumvention” tool, which would allow it to be targeted.

What happens next?
In terms of Protect IP, the Senate Judiciary committee has approved it and it’s waiting for a floor vote that has been scheduled for January 24. One hurdle: Sen. Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat, has placed a hold on the bill.

During a two-day debate in the House Judiciary committee in mid-December, it became clear that SOPA supporters have a commanding majority on the committee. They’re expected to approve it when Congress returns in 2012.

Where it goes from there is an open question that depends on where the House Republican leadership stands. Because the House’s floor schedule is under the control of the majority party, the decision will largely lie in the hands of House Speaker John Boehner and his lieutenants.

Another possibility is that there could be further House hearings on the security-related implications of SOPA, a move that would delay a final vote. An aide to House Judiciary Chairman Lamar Smith previously told CNET that there’s no indication yet as to any further hearings, but after the committee debate in December, don’t be surprised if it happens.