Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act which would enter U.S. law if passed, the House of Representatives will be voting on this in the next few days. There are many flaws with this, the EFF has a good FAQ about CISPA. In short it gives power to private companies to share their user's data with 3rd parties whenever they feel like it. This concerns anyone who uses an American company for anything from forums to email and so on.

Obama promised to veto it which could mean he'll actually sign it and say he has some reservations, a bit like with the NDAA.

We Don't All Live in America

There are a few Internet defense organisations based in the U.S.A., many do a brilliant job of gathering informations and breaking them down, investigating and so on. They often will have an option for non-Americans to participate, which is cool. Yet still, the whole thing feels way to America-centric and non-Americans have their own problems too, problems that these organisations do not address unfortunately.

As a non-American, it's perhaps time to stop playing along with American laws/bills and all their protests and petitions. These things just come back over and over again, that's how it works. People invest so much time reading about the new amendments, signing petitions, discussing these things on forums and chatrooms, but in reality it feels more like a big waste of time and energy. Time that could be spent actually doing things.

Actually, Most of Us Do Live in America, Virtually

There are 1 billion active Facebook users (according to Pingdom 2012 in numbers) out of 2.4 billion Internet users. If you want to know what people are thinking and doing, design a law that lets you into the Facebook and you have access to almost 50% of the world's profiles.

Facebook is an American company, if you are a European with a Facebook account then your profile is subject to American law. Even if your data is stored on a server located in Europe. In this case a part of you lives in America.

Facebook is obviously just one example, the same applies to any and every American operated Internet service, so Google, Hotmail, Twitter, Reddit, and so on. Even DuckDuckGo. Within the lot there are some companies that are more or less "good guys", others may be submissive and silent, in the end they are all subject to the Patriot Act and other goodies.

You may be interested in reading Safe Harbor: Why EU data needs 'protecting' from US law.

What Else Can I Do Besides Sign and Tweet ?

CISPA and many of its friends exist only because the overwhelming majority of Interweb users use centralised services. The problem is that almost everyone uses the same communication tools. This makes it easy to design laws that would target them and exploit their already exploited users. And that's what they do.

If the majority of users used their own servers all these laws would be very hard to implement. It would require actual work to start gathering a user's profile, so much that it would probably only happen when it's at least somewhat justifiable.

Running your own server isn't half as complicated as it sounds, I wont go into details here, but there are tools that make it easy (DISS for example, maybe not the best, but I tried at least). The ideal is to do this with friends and provide email services to your family and friends. Cheap and reasonably reliable servers exist and can be found under 20 euros a month even, they could host quite a few users.

All those Internet defense groups should be promoting self hosting, when they do that I will take them seriously.

You may have already heard about CISPA (or CISPA or CISPA at !wiki), if not the simple version is: It's another law/bill/treaty/crap designed to waste everyone's time.

The slightly longer version is that it is a bill designed to allow companies to share data with other companies or governments with less hassle, like the hassle of asking or even informing the person who's data is shared. The full title says it nicely: To provide for the sharing of certain cyber threat intelligence and cyber threat information between the intelligence community and cybersecurity entities, and for other purposes.

One interesting thing has popped up in the news, it's that Facebook supports CISPA. Here are some other letters from some brave companies who support CISPA. In Facebook's case I can totally understand their view, their whole business is based on user's data. How could they not support this ?

Now the expected thing to do, if you are interested in privacy and that sort of thing, is to spend hours reading boring legislative crap until your brain starts pouring out of your ears. However, I really don't care this time. This might sound selfish or just lame, but I don't feel very affected by this. I don't have personal data on third party services (or ones I can't trust).

The real reason I don't care is not because I feel covered, it's because many of those that aren't covered do not care. Seriously, so many people believe that the practicality of having an email provider that let's you "star and tag" emails and the convenience of keeping up with friends just by clicking on their name outweighs any reason for concern, since years.

So if you use such services, and again disagree with this sort of legislation then it's your problem to solve now.. You can delete your account(s), write to them or just hope it will go away magically.

How can the USA authorities take down a Hong-Kong based company and arrest people in New-Zealand ? Ars Technica explains, it turns out that the actions are based on the fact that Megaupload's clients were often in the USA, they ran adverts there and interacted with the USA market actively. In a way they are considered to have been running at least part of their business on USA grounds.

Fair or not, it seems that that is how the cookie crumbles, and crumbling it is. Personally I don't care for such websites and Kim Dotcom, aka Kimble Special Agent, seems far from being an angel. However it's still hard to accept that they can be taken down in an instant drug lord style. It doesn't seem like the accusations are half as bad as some towards companies that have either leaked petrol all over the world or have bankrupted families.. ...(insert long list of companies that messed up way more seriously and have in some cases even been bailed out).

In reaction to such news, an other "upload" service provider called Uploaded.to has decided to close it's service to the USA, this should help avoid breaking USA law on USA territory.

This whole abusive world policing attitude could earn the USA some Interweb censorship, but not from SOPA/PIPA this time, but simply from websites that do not want to have to deal with USA law. It's true that this Megaupload takedown happened right after the anti-SOPA strike, the what when why questions have been talked about all over the Internet, but now I am wondering if this isn't exactly what the USA wants, a censored Internet, like China and Iran, but censored voluntarily by website owners in fear of a possible breach of USA law and it's possible effects on one's postal address.

Update: In the past couple of days, many companies that provide the same services as Megaupload have either limited their services, closed their services to the U.S.A. or even just plain closed. Torrentfreak's report on the disturbance in the ecosystem.

It's no news that Fox News is mostly made up of real geniuses who always deliver properly researched, reliable and fair information. Today they published an article on how"savvy moron surfers circumvent Wikipedia blackout.

The article goes on about how people have found ways of getting access to knowledge by using alternative sources (other websites!!) but the most striking part was that they announced how to get actual content from the Wikipedia itself.. ORLY!

For the diehard Wiki-fan who simply cannot do without Wikipedia, there is even a way to circumvent the blackout, using a system that relies on Google's cache of online sites.

This is how: Enter a search item in Google's search box, click on the double gray arrow that will appear when you hover your mouse on the right side of the search results. When a snapshot shows up on the right, click on "cache" ... and voila! ... you will be directed to the last snapshot of your search item in Wikipedia.

Of course, you could also click on the "Learn more" link provided by the blacked out Wikipedia page and find a simpler solution like:

During the blackout, Wikipedia is accessible on mobile devices and smart phones. You can also view Wikipedia normally by disabling JavaScript in your browser, as explained on this Technical FAQ page. Our purpose here isn't to make it completely impossible for people to read Wikipedia, and it's okay for you to circumvent the blackout. We just want to make sure you see our message.

Of course, for Fox News it is much easier to relay the stupidest crap on earth then to go read 4 sentences.

Senator Chris Dodd, Chairman and CEO of the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) speaks about the anti SOPA/PIPA blackout, noticeably about Wikipedia.

It is an irresponsible response and a disservice to people who rely on them for information use their services. It is also an abuse of power given the freedoms these companies enjoy in the marketplace today. It’s a dangerous and troubling development when the platforms that serve as gateways to information intentionally skew the facts to incite their users in order to further their corporate interests.

Indeed, nobody should be allowed to take down their own website, only MPAA and friends should have that kind of power.

Parts of the Internet will be on strike tomorrow as you may have noticed on this site. Join us while it is still legal.

A few good links:

• List of sites on strike
• BoingBoing on strike
• EFF on SOPA

There are many many many more out there, click them while they are still legal.

A friend pointed out this article on how Richard Stallman was right all along and of course, I agree and actually was not part of those who think/thought that RMS is too paranoid/crazy. I don't have a mobile phone and don't have a googlebookspace account, etc etc.. Like you too right ?

Anyway, lately pieces are being put together, SOPA (crap), ProtectIP (also crap), HADOPI (merde), Spain blocking websites, Belarus bans anything foreign, etc etc. . . Oh, and Obama signed the National Defense Authorization Act which in short allows the U.S. (of North America) to detain anyone they suspect/want indefinitely..

It's all crap, and then you realise that half of the "cool Internet" has been using Godaddy as their registrar !!

The other day I read about how Go Daddy supports SOPA (and loves Microsoft and kills elephants !). Since there has been a massive move of domains out of GoDaddy, including Wikipedia (still at GoDaddy as I write, c'mon Jimmy, it's been 5 days now!).

Since GoDaddy has changed their mind about SOPA but then it appears they haven't exactly changed their minds.

If you actually use GoDaddy you can pledge to boycott GoDaddy.. . and/or you could just up and leave them, I mean who registers a domain with a company whose name is "Go Daddy" ?

Important note, if you leave, be careful where you go as there are many GoDaddy re-sellers out there.. Just go to Gandi.net or EasyDNS, they both openly oppose SOPA and aren't just doing it for marketing's sake.

Over the past 10 years or so the entertainment industry has been whining about losing money because of the Internet. Of course it is (most probably) false. The crazy thing isn't the bitching, it's the desire to have full control of human communication, over the Internet at least.

I am so tired of them that it is unbelievable, the only reason these people have any power is because people actually buy their products and hence provide them with a neat fortune.

From here on I am going to go out of my way to not purchase anything that provides them with income. I am already not a big client of theirs, however it can happen that I legally watch a movie or buy a movie merchandise, that's done.

I do not support the "Entertainment Industry" (anymore at least), I would like to see them disappear for good. I am not afraid of not being entertained.