Newzbin Dumps .COM, Promises VPN & Cyberlocker Services. Newzbin2, the site chosen by Hollywood to be their UK web-blocking guinea-pig, has revealed some of their forward plans.
Within weeks the Usenet indexing site will not only dump its .COM domain, but also look towards the creation of both VPN and cyberlocker services. Last October, the High Court in London handed down a judgment to BT, one of the UK’s largest Internet service providers. The injunction – the first of its type in UK history – ordered BT to block subscriber access to Usenet indexing site Newzbin2 on copyright grounds. Protect the Irish Internet. Copyright law should help rather than hinder Ireland - The Irish Times - Fri, Jan 27.
NET RESULTS:FOR THREE governments in a row, “short-sighted” and “sneaky” seem to have become the relevant terms in operation when bringing in controversial, high-impact legislation on digital issues.
In the past, from the government’s perspective, this approach has worked well in shoving in poorly drafted, unscrutinised law on the controversial area of data retention, giving the Republic one of the most severe, internationally criticised, anti-business retention regimes in the world. This time around, the Government is trying again to use secondary legislation – a statutory instrument requiring no discussion and no debate in the Oireachtas – to (supposedly) protect intellectual property for a narrow band of hard-lobbying entertainment industries. McGarr Solicitors – Dublin Solicitors Ireland. Bismark reputedly said that nobody should get too close to the making of laws or sausages.
On Thursday, on behalf of the StopSOPAIreland.com campaign, I took a trip to Leinster House, to catch a glimpse of the sausage machine at work. Together with Ian Bergin, who runs the Facebook campaign, and TJ McIntyre of DRI, I met with Catherine Murphy TD to discuss her scheduled exchange of questions with Minister Sherlock. We experienced the minute-by-minute changes of timetables and proposals in relation to the disputed Ministerial Order. We had originally believed that there would be a full debate that day on the matter. Instead, on arrival, we learned that instead there was to be a tightly structured 8 minute exchange of statements between Derek Keating for FG and Catherine Murphy for the Technical Group of Independents. Calm Reasoned Dialogue Helps - Blacknight Blog. The last week or so has been “interesting” to say the least.
(Last time round it was only a couple of days. …. now it’s stretched to a week) It’s also been incredibly busy, which is why I’m only getting round to posting this now and even now I doubt that anything I post will be that coherent, but I’ll give it a go.. ‘SOPA’ Law: Catherine Murphy and Stephen Donnelly present alternative Statutory Instrument to Minister Sherlock. Press Release | 31st January 2012 The Deputies called upon the Minister to enact the balanced measures at first opportunity and to follow with primary legislation.
Independent Deputies Catherine Murphy (Kildare North) and Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow-East Carlow) today presented Minister Seán Sherlock with a draft of an alternative Statutory Instrument which they believe clearly restates the position of European Copyright law in Ireland while also explicitly protecting some key basic online freedoms as laid out in the Scarlet v SABAM ruling of the European Court of Justice (ECJ) last November. The deputies, speaking ahead of a scheduled debate this evening on the subject, expressed their confidence that the wording would enable the Minister to meet his stated objective of fully transposing Directive 2001/29/EC into Irish law.
Ireland’s SOPA: no reprieve - SI not going back out for consultation. Last-minute hopes for a controversial statutory instrument dubbed Ireland’s SOPA going back out to the public for consultation have been dashed.
The instrument is due to be signed shortly. Lonely ISP Wants Other Providers To Disconnect Pirates. Having originally resisted the notion that it should stop its subscribers sharing copyright works, in a little under 4 years Ireland's ISP Eircom has come completely about-face.
Not only did it come to a private agreement with the music industry to implement a 3 strikes-style regime, but now its asking other ISPs to join them in doing so. It's lonely being this kind of 'pioneer', especially when it puts your company at a commercial disadvantage. In 2008, the Irish Recorded Music Association (IRMA) took legal action against Eircom, Ireland’s largest ISP. Wording of ‘SOPA Ireland’ legislation will NOT be changed – Sherlock.
The Lawyer Behind The Stop Sopa Ireland Campaign Writes. Last week I was invited to attend a panel discussion on the new SOPAIreland Copyright Law, tomorrow in the Science Gallery [Dublin].
It was a small panel – Minister Sean Sherlock (above), Paul Durrant representing Ireland’s ISPs, Tom Murphy from Boards.ie representing intermediaries and me. Last Thursday I got a lunchtime phone call from the event organiser. He told me he’d just got off the phone from speaking to the Minister’s office. The Minister had wanted him to know that unless I was uninvited, he would cancel. A diary clash would arise, was how it was put, I was told. I agreed to be uninvited. I have nothing but sympathy for the organiser, who is trying to do something valuable for his developer community.
Episode 20: The dirty business of cleaning the Cloud with SOPA. SOPA has become the pariah term for the Internet in recent weeks.
In the US, mass lobbying from internet users made it more undesirable than a fart in a spacesuit, & that is saying something. However, the day after the January 18th protests, MegaUpload was taken down by the FBI, citing fraud, money laundering, racketeering, & its founders arrested in New Zealand, pending extradition to the US to face those charges. Hackers target Government websites. Thursday 26 January 2012 11.42 The Department of Justice and the Department of Finance websites were both taken offline for a time in the early hours of this morning following an apparent cyber attack.
Both websites were down for around an hour after being targeted with a denial of service attack. Such attacks often see a website's servers overloaded with huge numbers of simple requests, which brings the website down. In a statement, the Department of Justice website said it experienced a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack. Viewpoint: V for Vendetta and the rise of Anonymous. 9 February 2012Last updated at 20:03 ET By Alan Moore Author On Saturday protests are planned across the world against Acta - the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement. The treaty has become the focus of activists associated with the Anonymous hacking network because of concerns that it could undermine internet privacy and aid censorship.
First published in 1982, the comic series V for Vendetta charted a masked vigilante's attempt to bring down a fascist British government and its complicit media. Many of the demonstrators are expected to wear masks based on the book's central character. Post SOPA, What Else Is Out There? By John Walker on January 25th, 2012 at 2:03 pm. Europe signs global internet censorship treaty. Polish Government's Plan To Sign ACTA Gets The SOPA Treatment. We received an amusing email over the weekend chiding us for never having covered ACTA -- the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement. Of course, we've actually written 247 articles that mention ACTA (yes, I just counted). It seems that among some folks who just joined the "worry about copyright legislation" bandwagon, they've just discovered ACTA as well. ACTA stories are quickly taking over the SOPA channel on Reddit. Dutch Parliament Rejects ACTA On Human Rights Violations. The controversial ACTA treaty is quickly losing support in Europe.
After a handful of countries already backed off last week, The Netherlands and Bulgaria put their decisions of hold today. A majority of the Parliament is against the ratification of ACTA. They only intend to change this position if there’s irrefutable evidence that it doesn’t violate basic human rights. Polish Protests Put ACTA ‘On Hold’ Last week the European Union has officially signed the controversial “anti-piracy” trade agreement ACTA. This brings ACTA a step closer to passing, but individual EU Member States and the European Parliament still have to ratify ACTA later this year.
But this may not happen. All across Europe people are opposing the secret treaty, and in Poland alone more than 100,000 people took the streets in recent days. Not without result, as the Polish Prime Minister now appears to change his pro-ACTA stance. Massive Street Protests Wage War On ACTA Anti-Piracy Treaty. Artist and Hacktivists Sabotage Spanish Anti-Piracy Law. Acta goes too far, says MEP. ACTA Anti-Piracy Treaty Criticized by EU Parliament President. Following the massive protests against ACTA yesterday, EU Parliament President Martin Schulz criticized the treaty on national television.
Protest drags down Europe’s SOPA. Acta: EU court to rule on anti-piracy agreement. ACTA Battle Nears Climax in Europe. Why I signed ACTA. We Need Copyright Reform, Not ACTA!