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PIPA anti-piracy bill vote postponed in Senate
posted by Technology @ 7:51 AM
Friday, January 20, 2012
Next week's scheduled vote on the PIPA anti-piracy bill has been postponed by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, handing a defeat to Hollywood and a major victory to Internet companies that launched online protests to battle the legislation and its House companion, known as SOPA.
"In light of recent events, I have decided to postpone Tuesday’s vote on the Protect IP Act," Reid (D-Nev.) said Friday. He called for all sides to work together to resolve "legitimate issues" raised about the bill to crack down on foreign websites that traffic in pirated movies, music and other goods.
"Counterfeiting and piracy cost the American economy billions of dollars and thousands of jobs each year, with the movie industry alone supporting over 2.2 million jobs. We must take action to stop these illegal practices," Reid said. "We made good progress through the discussions we've held in recent days, and I am optimistic that we can reach a compromise in the coming weeks."
Wikipedia led a 12-to-24-hour blackout by more than 10,000 websites on Wednesday in protest of the proposed Protect Intellectual Property Act and the Stop Online Piracy Act. The sites directed people to contact their members of Congress, flooding Capitol Hill with calls and emails.
The bills are strongly backed by the entertainment industry and had been on a fast track to approval, with the Senate set to hold a key procedural vote on Tuesday. But the protests led several co-sponsors of the legislation to pull their support, with numerous other lawmakers vowing to oppose the legislation in its current form out of concern that it could squelch free speech on the Internet and lead to the shutdown of legitimate sites.
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– Jim Puzzanghera in Washington
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SOPA and PIPA opponents warn the bills are not dead yet
posted by Technology @ 11:21 AM
Thursday, January 19, 2012
A day after a widespread Internet protest, key opponents of SOPA and PIPA warned Thursday that the controversial online piracy bills are not dead yet and called for lawmakers to slow down and start over.
"It's not dead at all," said Michael Petricone, vice president of government affairs for the Consumer Electronics Assn., noting that the Senate was still scheduled to hold a procedural vote on the Protect Intellectual Property Act on Tuesday.
At a Capitol Hill news conference, Petricone and others said opponents needed to continue to pressure Congress to remove the legislation from the fast track and start a more open process to craft a narrower bill that would not threaten collateral damage on legitimate websites.
“You have all kinds of very substantive, very smart interests who are bringing up very substantive potential problems with this bill," Petricone said. "Why can’t we step back and get it right? This isn’t the Patriot Act; the country’s not going to blow up if we don’t enact this next week."
Lawmakers' ears were still ringing from the thousands of calls and emails that flooded into Capitol Hill after Wikipedia led about 10,000 websites in a 24-hour blackout Wednesday to protest the bills. At least five co-sponsors of the bills publicly pulled their support, with several others announcing they would not vote for the legislation without major changes.
The lead sponsors of the bills have promised to make changes and are expected to remove the most controversial provision, which would allow Internet service providers to block access to foreign-based piracy sites. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), the lead backer of PIPA, is working on a set of amendments he plans to unveil before Tuesday's vote.
The cautions about the fight not being over were echoed by Wikipedia, whose English-language version was easily accessible again Thursday. A banner at the top of the site reads, "Thank you for protecting Wikipedia. (We're not done yet)."
"SOPA and PIPA are not dead: they are waiting in the shadows," Wikipedia said on a page linked from that banner. "We’re turning the lights back on. Help us keep them shining brightly."
Markham Erickson, who heads a coalition of Internet companies, said Congress needed to take more time to get the legislation right.
"There are solutions, but we need to step back and reset," said Erickson, whose NetCoalition includes Google Inc., Amazon.com, EBay and Yahoo Inc. "Instead of having to negotiate with a gun to our head, so to speak, let’s sit down and have a data-driven process."
He and other SOPA and PIPA opponents are looking toward legislation introduced by Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Vista) and Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), who have been two of the strongest congressional opponents of the Stop Online Piracy Act and the Protect Intellectual Property Act.
Their Online Protection & Enforcement of Digital Trade Act, known as the OPEN Act, is a much narrower approach that would try to cut off the money to foreign piracy sites through the U.S. International Trade Commission. The entertainment industry and other supporters of SOPA and PIPA said such an approach would not be as effective in shutting down foreign piracy sites.
But opponents of SOPA and PIPA said they liked the process Issa and Wyden have used in crafting their bill. The two lawmakers released a draft last year at www.KeepTheWebOpen.com and said they revised it to reflect some of the more than 150 substantive comments and suggested improvements received from visitors to the site.
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– Jim Puzzanghera in Washington
Photo: Protesters in New York on Wednesday demonstrate against the proposed Stop Online Piracy Act and Protect Intellectual Property Act. Credit: Mario Tama/Getty Images
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SOPA blackout: Bills lose three co-sponsors amid protests
posted by Technology @ 11:19 AM
Wednesday, January 18, 2012
Three co-sponsors of the SOPA and PIPA antipiracy bills have publicly withdrawn their support as Wikipedia and thousands of other websites blacked out their pages Wednesday to protest the legislation.
Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) withdrew as a co-sponsor of the Protect IP Act in the Senate, while Reps. Lee Terry (R-Neb.) and Ben Quayle (R-Ariz.) said they were pulling their names from the companion House bill, the Stop Online Piracy Act. Opponents of the legislation, led by large Internet companies, say its broad definitions could lead to censorship of online content and force some websites to shut down.
In a posting on his Facebook page, Rubio noted that after the Senate Judiciary Committee unanimously passed its bill last year, he has "heard legitimate concerns about the impact the bill could have on access to the Internet and about a potentially unreasonable expansion of the federal government's power to impact the Internet."
"Congress should listen and avoid rushing through a bill that could have many unintended consequences," Rubio said in announcing he was withdrawing his support. While he's committed to stopping online piracy, Rubio called for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) to back off plans to hold a key procedural vote on the bill on Tuesday.
Rubio's withdrawal will reduce the number of co-sponsors to 39. Last week, two other co-sponsors, Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) and Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), joined four other Senate Republicans in a letter to Reid also urging him delay the vote. But Grassley and Hatch have not withdrawn their support.
Terry and Quayle were among the 31 sponsors of the House legislation before they withdrew their support Tuesday.
Quayle still strongly supports the goal of the House bill to crack down on foreign websites that traffic in pirated movies, music, medicine and other goods.
"The bill could have some unintended consequences that need to be addressed," said Quayle spokesman Zach Howell. "Basically it needs more work before he can support it."
Terry said that he also had problems with the House bill in its current form and would no longer support it.
Wikipedia, Reddit and about 10,000 other websites blacked out their pages Wednesday with messages warning of the dangers of the legislation and urging people to contact their congressional representatives. Howell said Quayle's office had not seen a major increase in calls or emails Wednesday, but that the piracy bills have been the main issue in recent weeks for people contacting the office.
There has been a "manageable increase" in visits to House member websites Wednesday, said Dan Weiser, a spokesman for the House office of the chief administrative officer.
"It’s possible some users will see a short delay or slow loading of a member's web page," he said.
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– Jim Puzzanghera in Washington
Photo: Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.). Credit: Joe Burbank / Orlando Sentinel
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Verizon’s $2 ‘convenience fee’ sparks online petition, FCC interest
posted by Technology @ 1:09 PM
Friday, December 30, 2011
Verizon Wireless’ new $2 “payment convenience fee” for online credit and debit payments is sparking a consumer backlash and a some scrutiny from the Federal Communications Commission.
Since the fee was announced Thursday, customers of the nation’s largest wireless carrier have complained about the charge on Twitter, in Facebook groups and pages and Google+ too. The $2 charge is set to go into effect starting Jan. 15 for Verizon users not enrolled in automatic bill pay options who pay their bills online with a credit or debit card.
On Friday morning, the FCC said in a statement that, “On behalf of American consumers, we’re concerned about Verizon’s actions and are looking into the matter.”
Molly Katchpole, a Washington activist and Verizon subscriber, started a petition at the online activism site Change.org calling for Verizon to scrap the $2 fee.
The Change.org petition, launched late Thursday, is a tactic Katchpole used earlier this year when Bank of America attempted to institute a similar $5 fee for those who use its debit cards for purchases.
The Bank of America fee promoted a national outcry and eventually the bank abandoned the fee before it could go into effect.
Time magazine identified Katchpole’s petition as one of the many instrumental actions that defeated the Bank of America fee and the activist is hoping to have similar success this time around with Verizon. As of the middle of the day on Friday, the petition had more than 37,000 signatures.
“Verizon just announced a new $2 fee for paying your bills online. Really. Even though paying via internet is fully automated,” Katchpole’s petition reads. “It’s not just about the money (though if you’re like me, you don’t have extra cash to be sending to a giant phone company in order to pay your own bills.) It’s that Verizon thinks it can do anything to its customers, and that we’re powerless to stop it. (Spoiler alert: We’re not.)”
Verizon, which has more than 90 million customers, said it was introducing the fee to help make up for the frees credit card companies take when they process payments.
In 2010, Verizon Communications, Verizon Wireless’ parent company, reported a profit of $10.2 billion, down from $11.6 billion in 2009. Last quarter, Verizon doubled its profit from a year earlier to $1.38 billion.
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– Nathan Olivarez-Giles and Jim Puzzanghera
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Photo: A sign at a Verizon store in New York. Credit: Seth Wenig / Associated Press
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Sens. Herb Kohl and Mike Lee call for Google antitrust probe
posted by Technology @ 2:46 PM
Monday, December 19, 2011
The chairman and top Republican on the Senate antitrust subcommittee have asked regulators to investigate Google Inc.'s search practices, saying they were concerned the company was biasing results to favor its own products.
The senators — panel Chairman Herb Kohl (D-Wis.) and Mike Lee (R-Utah) — sent a letter Monday to the Federal Trade Commission, which already is conducting a broad antitrust investigation into Google's business practices, including search and advertising.
Kohl and Lee questioned Google Chairman Eric Schmidt at a contentious hearing in September. Schmidt's answers, along with testimony from two Google competitors, raised questions that should be explored by regulators, the senators said in their letter to FTC Chairman Jonathan Leibowitz.
"We believe these allegations regarding Google's search engine practices raise important competition issues," wrote Kohl and Lee, whose committee has been conducting its own review of Google. "We are committed to ensuring that consumers benefit from robust competition in online search and that the Internet remains the source of much free-market innovation."
At the hearing, senators heard complaints from the chief executives of local review site Yelp and online product comparison site Nextag that Google abuses its search engine dominance at the expense of smaller competitors.
Asked by Lee during the hearing whether Google "cooked" its search results on three product-comparison websites to favor Google Shopping results, Schmidt responded, "Senator … I can assure you we have not cooked anything."
Schmidt strongly denied the accusations. But Kohl and Lee said Monday that there were enough questions to warrant an FTC review.
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– Jim Puzzanghera in Washington
Photo: Google Inc. Chairman Eric Schmidt takes the oath at a Senate antitrust subcommittee hearing in September. Credit: Associated Press.
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