What would SOPA and PIPA do?
The legislation, known as SOPA in the US House of Representatives and PIPA in the Senate, would use court orders to curb access to foreign websites “dedicated to theft” through techniques such as disabling links to those sites.

** They also cut off US-based payments processing for those overseas websites that traffic in stolen content or counterfeit goods.

Why do copyright holders say the law is needed?
Entertainment companies and other copyright holders say many legal copyright remedies aren’t effective against big foreign sites such as PirateBay. They say the bills will help curb online piracy that they claim costs them billions of dollars a year. Technology companies say they too oppose such piracy but argue that the proposed laws go too far.

What is the current status of the bills?
The White House weighed in on January 14 with objections to the legislation, particularly a provision that would have required Internet service providers such as a Verizon Communications and Comcast Corp to cut off access to infringing sites through a technology known as DNS blocking.

In the days before the White House statement, backers of both bills had said they planned to move away from those provisions. The Senate bill is scheduled for a vote on January 24, although some supporters of the bill have asked to postpone that vote. The House bill is still before the Judiciary Committee.

Why do technology companies oppose the bills?
Technology companies say the legislation would undermine an existing law called the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and its “safe harbor” provisions for websites and others that act in good faith in their handling of third-party content on their sites. Content companies say the bills simply fill gaps in the DMCA and wouldn’t affect the safe harbor provisions.

** Technology companies express concerns that the legislation would encourage frivolous litigation. Content companies believe the difficulty of squeezing large payments out of illegal overseas sites would discourage frivolous litigation.

** Technology companies say users would circumvent new restrictions and piracy would still occur. Content companies say the law would create important tools for fighting piracy.

** Technology companies worry they would have to police their services for links to overseas pirated content. Content companies say the technology companies would have to act only if notified.

** Technology companies say part of the House legislation encourages providers to act against foreign sites on their own initiative by providing immunity from liability, which could lead to overaggressive actions against foreign sites. Content companies say that sites that act against pirates in good faith and with evidence to back up their actions shouldn’t have to worry about lawsuits.

** Technology companies say there is no due process for overseas sites that are accused of piracy. Content companies say normal due process applies.

Hacker-sponsored satellite project aims to prove free speech is as valuable as cell spectrum

January 03, 2012, 4:31 PM — Driven reportedly more by the effort of entertainment companies to police their content and punish those who infringe copyrights than by the increasing number of countries adding further restrictions on what their people can or can’t do online, a group of German hackers is trying to start a movement to build a communications satellite that could support unrestricted channels on the Internet.

The project, called the Hackerspace Global Grid, would consist of at least one satellite in low-Earth orbit providing connections among independent ground stations – creating a network of nodes completely independent of the Internet itself.

“The first goal is an uncensorable internet in space,” said hacktivist Nick Farr, who began the call for a satellite project in August in response to new Internet restrictions in China, Libya, Syria and other authoritarian countries as well as pressure to suppress commercial content in Western countries with laws such as the Stop Online Piracy Act (Sopa). “Let’s take the Internet out of the control of terrestrial entities.”

Farr was among the activists pitching the project at the Chaos Communications Congress in Berlin in August at which the group presented the project in detail. The Congress is an annual hacker conference sponsored by the German Chaos Computer Club – an anomaly among hacker groups in that it has been in operation so long it has become respectable as much as a political movement opposing restrictive rules on digital life as for the hacking activity of some members.

The Hackerspace Global Grid (working project site here)is daunting for its ambition to put a satellite into space, primarily due to the difficulty and expense of launching it on someone else’s rocket. Building the satellite would be much simpler, and the ground stations would be easier still, according to project sources quoted in a Techspot story about its launch.

Ground stations would cost between $100 and $150 for receivers that would use GPS to determine where the satellite should be and zero in on its signal, they said.

The satellite is likely to be based on work done to develop low-cost satellites by the Amateur Radio Satellite (AMSAT) association in England and Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd., a specialist in small satellites that was spun out of the University of Surrey and with Constellation, a German aerospace research collective.

Building the satellite and launching it are still problems being solved, but prototypes for different types of ground stations could be ready by the middle of this year, Farr told the BBC.

Aside from the complexity of building the sat, expense and red tape of getting it loaded on an appropriate rocket and placed in the right orbit is the possibility that one or more governments in countries the project is based will delay or stop it all together.

Most have a hard enough time tolerating pirate Internet sites, let alone super-terrestrial independent pirate Internets.

Once all the other pieces are in place, it wouldn’t surprise me to see the actual launch delayed by years while its originators fight to get a court to rule that an Internet unrestricted by national or commercial censorship is as good a justification to put another piece of junk in orbit as defense, espionage or, in the case of telecommunications companies, the desire to use publicly owned skies and space to make money for a very few.

Google promises “50% off or more at places you’ll love,” on a sign up page and offers six locations — Portland; California’s Oakland/East Bay and San Francisco: and New York City’s downtown, midtown and uptown. So far, only Portland is offering a beta version of Offers, but no deals are available right now.

The program has been in the works since at least January, when Mashable got hold of a face sheet on services. According to that document, Google Offers will look and operate much like Groupon or LivingSocial and send an email to users with a local deal of the day. Consumers then have a specific time period (likely 24 hours) to act on the deal.

Google’s service comes after the company famously tried to buy groupon for $6 billion. Groupon rebuffed the offer and is now readying an IPO that could be as high as $25 billion.

By: Todd Wassermen from Mashable

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