And yet the public -- with more than 10 million petitioners before blackout day -- are, in Hackford's view, "dupes". That's what these guys think of you. They hate you and underestimate you and have no clue at all about why you do what you do.

Oh my God, entertainment industry people are still pitching for SOPA - Boing Boing

Top execs at the SOPA-promoting RIAA said over and over that the process of addressing alleged copyright infringements would be open and fair, not the secret-accusations-in-a-back-room affair most SOPA opponents imagined it would be.

All opponents had to go on was the language in the act, which described a process in which those claiming to own copyrights could make accusations to law enforcement agencies, which would go enforce the law without having to validate that the accusations were true or that the accuser actually owned the copyright.

That's all silly politics, right? Propaganda. Hating from the pro, hating from the con.

The process would be ruled by the U.S. legal system, so enforcement would not be random, mysterious, unexplained or capricious. Right?

Apropos of nothing, JotForm is back online.

I strongly agree with the sentiment of this editorial - the Jotform shutdown is a major problem. The US Government arbitrarily shut down a legitimate website without due process of law. This is a fundamental threat to the integrity of the Internet and to freedom of expression online. Furthermore, this shutdown demonstrates EXACTLY the sort of scenario that SOPA envisioned.

Here is the really scary thing - SOPA was about foreign sites - the Jotform takedown demonstrates that the US Government already believes that it can exercise SOPA-like authority over domestic sites.

If you were angry about SOPA, you ought to be livid about this. Unlike ACTA and the Cybersecurity treaty and all the other stuff that pundits have floated as "the next SOPA" this really is the next SOPA. And its already here.

JotForm takedown shows anti-SOPA hysteria wasn't alarming enough | ITworld

Kaminsky has been publishing some useful analysis of the recent RSA research.

The “weak RSA moduli” bug is almost (and possibly) exclusively found within certificates that were already insecure (i.e. expired, or not signed by a valid CA).

This attack almost certainly affects not a single production website.

The flaw has nothing to do with RSA or “multi-secret” systems.

IT’S NOT ABOUT RON AND WHIT

Primal Fear: Demuddling The Broken Moduli Bug « Dan Kaminsky's Blog

The draft of the Cybersecurity legislation circulated last year included a number of troubling provisions, such as the requirement that any computer security professional working on "critical infrastructure" obtain a government approved professional certification, and a bizarre provision providing that the President could disconnect privately owned "critical infrastructure" from the Internet.

The new draft of the bill does not seem to include either of these provisions. Its a long bill and I have not read it carefully. Its possible that the certification provision is in there somewhere and I missed it, but in looking over the text, I don't see it there. You can click through the link at the bottom of this article and check for yourself.

The professional certification requirement is problematic because it would turn the practice of computer security into a very heavily regulated profession. The certification requirement would provide a back door mechanism through which certain classes of people, such as those who don't have a relevant college degree or those who have been convicted of a crime, could be legally excluded from practicing the profession (regardless of individual circumstances). Frankly, you are not going to get the best and brightest cybersecurity minds to sit through certification retraining three times a year, and so this would lead to brain drain away from critical infrastructure protection and into other roles that are not as heavily regulated.

Supporters of this requirement like to raise the fact that DOD requires certifications. There is a substantial difference between any employer (albeit large) requiring certifications, and the government requiring employers to require certifications through a federal law.

I am glad this provision is gone. What remains does not appear to be too much of a pill to swallow.

CyberSecurity Bill - Professional Certifications appear to be off the table

JotForm also doesn't create content itself. Instead, it helps customers create online forms that can then be embedded in their websites for easy data collection.

But that didn't spare the site from having its entire business shuttered without warning yesterday as the site's domain name was shut down at the request of the US Secret Service. JotForm's domain name registrar, GoDaddy, redirected the site's nameservers to NS1.SUSPENDED-FOR.SPAM-AND-ABUSE.COM—and with that, JotForm.com became unreachable and the site's two million user-created forms all broke.

And it all may have been done without a court order.

Would supporters of SOPA who claim there are no freedom of speech concerns associated with a U.S. Government website blacklist care to explain THIS?

Takedowns run amok? The strange Secret Service/GoDaddy assault on JotForm (updated)

For some reason reporters keep using the word "conciliatory" regarding the Copyright Power's new PR approach. Juxtapositions like the following are absolutely bizarre:

That message includes taking a more conciliatory approach to Silicon Valley, and entertainment execs are planning possible junkets to Northern California to see if they can find common ground on a new bill in Washington.

In a recent New York Times op-ed, Cary Sherman, Recording Industry Association of America chief executive, panned Wikipedia and Google’s protest against the bills on their sites as “an abuse of trust and a misuse of power.”

But he took a different line in an interview with POLITICO, saying that Internet companies need content to thrive and that media companies need the Web to distribute their movies, music and TV shows.

“We need to repair the mistrust that obviously inspired a lot of the opposition to this bill,” Sherman said. “It’s either a deliberate misinformation campaign, or it’s mistrust where two sides look at the same thing and come up with different impressions about what they mean. Somehow, we have to look to bridge those differences and get on the same page.”

1. There is absolutely nothing "conciliatory" about the Copyright Power's new tone, which has been presented in multiple essays and opeds in a number of different forums. Opponents of SOPA are called liars and criminals. Wide eyed conspiracy theories are presented in which the 1800 Wikipedia editors who participated in the decision to black out the site are collectively characterized as a stalking horse.

This is not about reconciliation. These people are positively pouring gasoline on the fire. They are cementing opposition and digging a hole that will make it very difficult to compromise in the future.

2. I honestly worry that these media executives really do believe the things that they are saying. When you want something, its really easy to willfully ignore difficult facts. When millions of people are protesting you, its easier to dismiss them as misinformed than it is to accept that they might have a point. The problems that SOPA presents for freedom of expression are not straight forward - they are unintended secondary consequences of the actions the bills require. Its easy to imagine media executives brushing away concerns about fair use, fraudulent copyright claims, and blacklist scope creep as minor details.

3. I'm not at all concerned that anyone who isn't part of the Copyright Power is persuaded by these essays. Raising questions about the legitimacy of the arguments against SOPA is only going to drive people to look more carefully at the details, and the details are widely available. Normal people are going to buy the arguments of respected engineers and legal scholars before they buy the arguments of self interested corporate lobbyists and the rock stars they employ. Normal people are not that stupid, and they are not steeped in the self delusions that prevent Cary Sherman from understanding why well informed objective people "come up with different impressions" than he does of the laws he is advocating.

Hollywood to make over message for D.C. - Jennifer Martinez - POLITICO.com

In the late 1990's Wired Magazine ran a website called HotWired which was honestly a lot more fun than anything on the web these days appears to be. One of the features was the Beta Lounge - an online radio station that played electronic music out of San Francisco. It was literally the pulsating beat of the dot com bubble broadcast directly from its hub to your computer, anywhere in the world.

Lycos bought HotWired back in 1999 and most of it has long since been dismantled. However, the Beta Lounge still rocks on - 15 years later! - from Germany... I wanted to buy a t-shirt as I used to have one 15 years ago but unfortunately with shipping and currency conversion its over 40 bucks. However, its nice to listen to the mellow layered textures of electronic soundscape that are still pouring out of that url - and all of the old sets are up there in the archive, running all the way back to 1997!

I donated a few bucks to them - may the Beta Lounge never die!

15 years of the BETA LOUNGE

An Israeli Cabinet minister says his country will "settle the score" with the perpetrators of a bombing attempt in Bangkok.

Did someone just start another war?

Israel to "settle the score" for Bangkok attack - CBS News

For years, high quality information about one of our democracy’s most critical activities has been nearly impossible to come by -- that is, until the Voting Information Project (VIP) was born. The Pew Center on the States launched this initiative in 2008 to become the 21st century transmission line between election offices and voters. VIP answers voters’ most common questions -- things like “where do I vote?”, “who is on my ballot?”, and “how do I navigate the voting process?” -- by making official information available in the places where voters are looking for it, whether online or on their mobile devices.

There.

TransparencyCamp 2012

I have a right to free speech under the first amendment. That does not mean I have "Free Speech Property". Rights are not property. You can have rights over property, but the rights themselves are not property.

Claiming that copyright is property is not intellectually honest. As a creator of a copyrighted work, you can claim ownership of the original work and you have property rights to the original work. However, copyright extends only to the ability to copy that work. That ability to copy is not property. It is a right. Rights can only be infringed not stolen.

RIAA Totally Out Of Touch: Lashes Out At Google, Wikipedia And Everyone Who Protested SOPA/PIPA | Techdirt