Anonymous at it again

One of my earlier posts dealt with thepiratebay.org being shut down in the UK and now the hacker group known as Anonymous is aiming its efforts at India's government for shutting down several torrent sites.  according to BBC , Anonymous has attacked several of India's government websites including their supreme court and websites for political parties by overloading them with data.  They also attack a site belonging to a an anti piracy company that blocked sites like Vimeo.  With the current trend of government attempts to control the internet in our own country with bills such as SOPA and CISPA, there is a very real danger that these attempts to control the internet will continue to grow.
It is groups like Anonymous that have been bringing attention to these particular issues and the dangers of government attempts to silence and censor the people.  The idea of censorship affects media since it has existed and with new forms of media such as the internet the question of who owns media and who controls it has become more relevant then ever with copyrighted materials being used millions of times a day to create new things.

Senate Hearing on Online Video, Online

C-span has made it possible to view the senate hearing held April 24, 2012 by the Senate Science, Commerce and Transportation Committee in regards to the emerging online video trend. The hearing is focused on understanding what the rapid growth of online video means for US consumers. Senator Rockefeller of West Virginia asks, "How will this disruptive technology, that online viewing will provide, lead to better content and more consumer choice?" Online video services such as Hulu and Netflix provide their customers with a selective viewing choice at a minimal price compared to cable programming. The average price for cable television in the US is somewhere around $90 to $100 per month and the customer is forced to choose a tiered system of channels, usually with a few very popular channels within each increasing price bracket. Online video companies charge around $10 to $20 per month and the viewing choices are left completely up to the customer in the sense that one does not have to choose channel packages with increasing prices and countless needless channels. Therefore I would posit that online video increases the content quality by limiting the useless features and channels that come with cable and all for a fraction of the price to the consumer. Now, the garbage content is still there if the consumer chooses to view it, but it is a more interactive process to retrieve those programs, unlike the linear scrolling of television channels which could lead children to unsavory programming, but the online version doesn't charge extra for 500 channels of totally unwatchable TV.
Barry Diller, chairman of IAC and an investor in Aereo had interesting and poignant remarks regarding online video, one which I will remark on. Mr Diller pointed out that congress needs to be vigilant and protective of the current Internet structure which allows anyone to be a producer and to provide their content directly to the viewer. Mr Diller stresses that no one should be allowed to stand between the individual media producers and their audiences. This is one of the main things that separates the inter net from traditional forms of publication in that an individual can produce a media and self publish it for free, not including access to a computer and to the Internet. The producer does not have to engage with the publishing industry in order to distribute to their audience. That is what Google is for!
These ideas and fore thoughts are excellent topics for the senate to be fielding as they have the power to regulate the Internet and our communication paths, all 500 channels of it.

Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA)

We all have heard of the SOPA bill that was proposed in January, and we know about the blackouts on certain websites that stood to protest the proposed bill. However, we have not heard much about the new attempt at regulating the internet. The CISPA (Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act) bill is being proposed as a form of "tracking the nefarious activities of hackers, terrorists and foreign states" (The Guardian). Although the bill may sound like it is for regulating hackers and online terrorists, it is written with loose language that allows these forms of regulation to be used on the everyday citizen. This bill will allow for the government to demand private information from web companies about users for "security purposes". Many argue that these are forms of surveillance or tapping. Ultimately the language in the bill allows for the government to conduct searches on people without search warrants. The EFF has explained their main concerns with the bill stating that:

"• First, there is a lack of any standard for the type of information that can be collected.
• Second, all the information will go to the national security agency, the US defense department's online intelligence arm. In 2010, the NSA was found guilty of conducting surveillance programmes without warrants.
• Third, there is no clarity in the bill as to what the information will be used for. "It should be used for cybersecurity purposes only, but the bill doesn't say that," Reitman said." (The Guardian)


Many people who know about the bill have voiced their concerns for it, however, this bill has been doing a good job at flying under the radar, not getting nearly as much attention as SOPA. I found it particularly interesting that upon searching the title of the bill in the Google search engine many of the discussions on the bill were discussions by news organizations from other countries or tech websites, but nothing from any major news channels here in the US. This bill could bring many changes to the way in which our information is used on the internet and yet there is very little coverage of it with major news organizations.
There is a video clip for whoever would like to explore it a little more on the RT.