The United States Senate on Thursday passed a massive $662 billion defense spending bill that brings with it various sanctions, harsher treatment of suspected terrorists and more.

Under the bill the U.S. plans to issue crippling sanctions against Iran in the hopes of choking off finances to the country by marking their entire banking sector as a “primary money laundering concern.”  By marking the Iran banking system in such a way the US and other international banks will closely monitor transactions and deny fund transfers from the countries lending institutions.

Sanctions against Iran were met with a 100-0 unanimous vote despite the possibility that gas prices could be pushed up in the United States because of the tighting control over Iran’s finances.

Speaking about sanctions against Iraq Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev) noted:

“Iran’s actions are unacceptable and pose a danger to the United States and the entire world,” and ”Iran supports terrorist groups, arms the killers of American soldiers, lies about its nuclear program, violates its citizens’ basic rights and threatens Israel’s security.”

The bill will also allow the U.S. military to hold suspected terrorists indefinitely without trial even if they are captures on US soil and if they are American citizens.

Because of the bills ramped up security against “possible” terrorists the White House has already threatened to veto the bill. The White House issued the following statement:

“Applying this military custody requirement to individuals inside the US would raise serious legal questions, and would be inconsistent with the fundamental American principle that our military does not patrol our streets.”

The terrorist section of the bill would also require that all terrorists linked to al-Qaeda and their affiliates be placed under direct military custody, while American citizens would be exempt from such military holdings control.

The bill has managed to anger civil rights groups, including the the senior legislative counsel for the ACLU who revealed:

“Since the bill puts military detention authority on steroids and makes it permanent, American citizens are at greater risk of being locked away by the military without charge or trial if this bill becomes law.”

It’s not just the American Civil Liberties Union that opposes more military control over terrorist suspects, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta also opposed the bill as did FBI Director Robert Mueller who both said the bill “challenges or constrains the president’s authorities to collect intelligence, incapacitate dangerous terrorists and protect the nation.”

The section of the bill authorizing money for military personnel, weapons systems, national security programs in the Energy Department and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan for the fiscal year beginning Oct. 1 was met with a vote of 93-7.

It should be noted that the bill is $27 billion less than President Obama requests and $43billion less than what Congress awards to the Pentagon in the 2010 fiscal year.

As of Thursday the White House has said the threat of a veto still stands if the bill remains in it’s current state.

Do you think the U.S. Senate has overstepped their bounds is the treatment of potential terrorists? Would you pay more for gas at the pump if it meant constraining the power of Iran?

[Image via ShutterStock.com]

US Senate Passes Massive $662 Billion Defense Spending Bill is a post from: The Inquisitr

The American Dream has been lost for almost half (41%) of Americans, according to a survey by Yahoo! Finance.

The figure may be shocking but it’s consistent with reality that 49 million Americans are living in poverty and unemployment rate at 16%. Confidence is also low with Americans not willing to take on debt, not confident to buy real estate properties, and spending less in general. Despite the unwillingness to spend, savings is also low compared to three years ago. It is not surprising then that 63% of Americans believe that the economy is getting worse, including 72% of those over the age of 55.

What’s scary though it the finding that 37% of adults have no retirement savings and 38% plan to live off Social Security.

All is not lost though as 53% of Americans between the ages of 18-34 still see America as the land of opportunity. About 45% of parent also believe that their kids will be better off than they are. There’s hope apparently.

How about you, how do you feel about the American Dream?

The American Dream Has Been Lost for 41% of Americans is a post from: The Inquisitr

French President Nicolas Sarkozy thinks that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is “a liar.”

In a conversation with President Barack Obama where Sarkozy was unaware of a live microphone, he said:

“I cannot bear Netanyahu, he’s a liar.”

Obama replied:

“You’re fed up with him, but I have to deal with him even more often than you.”

Obama then urged Sarkozy to persuade the Palestinian Authority to step down its campaign for membership of the United Nations.

The accidental broadcast of the two leaders’ conversation happened during the recently concluded G20 Summit in Cannes. Journalists who overheard the conversation agreed not to publish the chat but one reporter was said to have leaked the news. Netanyahu’s office declined to comment.

We can only hope that this would not strain their relationship as the three leaders try to intensify their pressure on Iran over its nuclear plans.

Netanyahu is a “liar” – Sarkozy is a post from: The Inquisitr

Increased technological capabilities such as IT, mobile computing and social media are considered to be the most important skills by far for tomorrow’s global workforce.

This was the result of a survey conducted by PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) and GEMS Education asking 400 business leaders from the US, UK, China and Brazil to rank the important skills for tomorrow’s global workforce. Thirty seven percent of the respondents agreed on IT skills as the most important.

The survey was published at the World Economic Forum’s “Summer Davos” in Dalian, China.

The second highest priority was considered to be deep technical skills (specialist knowledge of the business) with 20 percent of business leaders polled ranking it as the most important skill for tomorrow’s global workforce. Emerging economies attached more importance to this skill than did the more mature ones. In China, 20 percent of business leaders considered deep technical skills to be the most important skill and in Brazil 32 percent of business leaders considered it to be the most important skill. However in the US, only 13 percent of business leaders considered deep technical skills to be the most important skill. And in the UK only 15 percent considered it to be the most important skill.

Dr. Manny Rivera, Chief Executive Officer of GEMS’ US-based Global Partnership Schools, said:

“We invited business leaders to rank what they considered the most important in the future: technological capabilities, multilingual capabilities, deeper technical skills, cross-cultural networking skills, autonomous work habits or a higher aptitude for innovation. The GEMS Education survey shows clearly that American business leaders, as well as those from other corners of the world, prioritize IT skills above any other skills for their future workforce. Governments need to take note of business leaders’ view of skills more than ever as there is a global skills race that is only going to get more competitive.”

Business leaders were also asked which strategies they should adopt to ensure they have access to the most suitable employees in the future. Chinese business leaders are by far the most likely to want to recruit from abroad with 22 percent saying that recruiting from abroad would be the most effective way of accessing suitable employees of the future. However, only nine percent of Brazilians consider recruiting from abroad to be the most effective way of accessing the most suitable employees whilst only five percent of US and UK businesses leaders consider recruiting from abroad to be the most effective way of finding the most suitable employees.

How about you? Are your skills aligned with tomorrow’s global workforce?

IT Skills Considered Most Important for Tomorrow’s Workforce According to Business Leaders is a post from: The Inquisitr

First it was the last launch, and landing, of NASA’s space shuttle and now we find out that our other bastion in space, the International Space Station will come to the end of its life in 2020 with the ignoble crashing into an ocean somewhere.

The reason given for sending it into the depth is this way it won’t end up becoming a huge hunk of space debris that could endanger satellites and any future space travel above the earth.

“Right now we’ve agreed with our partners that the station will be used until approximately 202 … After it completes its existence, we will be forced to sink the ISS. It cannot be left in orbit, it’s too complex, too heavy an object, it can leave behind lots of rubbish” Vitaly Davydov, deputy chief, Roskosmos space agency

via SlashGear

This news of course comes on the heels of China’s announcement that they are preparing to build their own space station.

China’s new space palace, called “Tiangong” (or “heavenly palace,” see?) will be far smaller than the ISS, tipping the scales up here in zero-g at a mere 60 tons to the 450 tons or so of the ISS. It’ll consist of one primary module (the one in the above pic, launching before the end of the year) along with two experiment modules and some extra docking ports for cargo craft.

via DVICE

The International Space Station to join the Titanic at the bottom of the ocean in 2020 is a post from: The Inquisitr

Many of the so-called pirate site owners believe that as long as their site isn’t hosted on US based servers that they are pretty safe from retribution by the entertainment industry and their trade groups, the problem is that if ICE has their way this may not be the case.

This is a lesson that Richard O’Dwyer, a computer undergrad studying at a university in northern England, is learning as the US authorities are trying very hard to extradite him to the US to face charges of being the admin of the TVShack site that was seized by ICE in mid-2010.

It doesn’t matter that O’Dwyer is a UK citizen or that TVShack is extremely similar to another site called TV-Links which has already been deemed as being legal by the UK courts. As far as the US authorites are concerned O’Dwyer has broken US law and as such should face US courts.

So what basis is ICE using as grounds for the charges and extradition attempt?

Well it boils down to one simple thing – O’Dwyer used a US based domain registrar, VeriSign, to register the TVShack domain.

“The jurisdiction we have over these sites right now really is the use of the domain name registry system in the United States. That’s the key,” says ICE assistant deputy director Erik Barnett speaking with The Guardian.

The only necessary “nexus to the US” is a .COM or .NET domain for which Verisign acts as the official registry operator, Barnett added.

via TorrentFreak

The whole domain seizing operation by ICE has been fraught with questions about its legality, as well as more than a few already deemed legal sites being seized, and this situation with O’Dwyer only goes to show just how much these organizations will go to bend, or ignore, the law to get what they want.

Does your “pirate” site have a US domain registrar? You too could be extradited. is a post from: The Inquisitr

It’s bad enough that we have Homeland Security’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) seizing domains, including legal foreign domains, just because they think the sites are doing something illegal but now it seems that the Obama administration wants to go even further and make it so you have to get government approval for that new domain.

Yes, as hard as it might to believe, Declan McCullagh over at CNET has a report that:

The Obama administration is quietly seeking the power for it and other governments to veto future top-level domain names, a move that raises questions about free expression, national sovereignty, and the role of states in shaping the future of the Internet.

This is coming about as a new wave of domain suffixes are being applied for to extend the list of top level domains that already exist: .com, .org, and .net. The Obama administration is glossing over the affair as they say in a statement to CNET:

“has merit as it diminishes the potential for blocking of top level domain strings considered objectionable by governments. This type of blocking harms the architecture of the DNS and undermines the goal of universal resolvability (i.e., a single global Internet that facilitates the free flow of goods and services and freedom of expression).”

However Declan points out that what the government is looking for is veto rights over any new domain suffix being created.

The Obama administration is proposing (PDF) that domain approval procedures be changed to include a mandatory “review” by an ICANN advisory panel comprised of representatives of roughly 100 nations. The process is open-ended, saying that any government “may raise an objection to a proposed (suffix) for any reason.” Unless at least one other nation disagrees, the proposed new domain name “shall” be rejected.

This would create an explicit governmental veto over new top-level domains. Under the procedures previously used in the creation of .biz, .name, and .info, among others, governments could offer advice, but the members of the ICANN board had the final decision.

Okay so Obama isn’t really looking have a say over what you want to call your new domain but that doesn’t mean that having a veto over whether a new domain suffix is added isn’t good either.

Obama wants you to clear that new domain name with the government is a post from: The Inquisitr

Counterpoint. (Source unknown.)

[Map] How Europe sees the US is a post from: The Inquisitr

The above image is of a normal town in Afghanistan called Tarok Kolache when it was seeing better days even though it was, according to American forces, overrun by Taliban insurgents.

After they had failed in two previous attempts to clear the town of the Taliban the US forces, led by Lt. Col. David Flynn; commander of Combined Joint Task Force 1-320th, decided that they needed to bomb the Taliban out of the town.

The only problem is that in the process they totally demolished the town of Tarok Kolache. In fact it no longer exists as you can see by the images below.

According to a post at Danger Room the head honchos are so happy with the results that they are okaying this type of thing for bigger operations

Broadwell writes that the operation is ultimately a success, quoting Flynn as saying “As of today, more of the local population talks to us and the government than talk to the Taliban.” That appears to be good enough for higher command. Petraeus, having visited the village and allowing Flynn to personally approve reconstruction projects worth up to $1 million, told his commanders in the south to “take a similar approach to what 1-320th was doing on a grander scale as it applies to the districts north of Arghandab.”

Ever wonder what 25 tons of bombs do to a town? is a post from: The Inquisitr

If you want to start a passionate discussion in tech circles just mention Net Neutrality and FCC in the same sentence. If you want to get a lot of blank stares and shuffling of feet just mention net neutrality at your next PTA meeting or neighborhood corner bar.

There is a lot being made about a recent poll by polling company Rasmussen where they found that one in five Americans want the FCC to regulate the Internet. From Huffington Post to reddit you can see the techies get all their panties in a knot and you have host of podcasts, like Buzz Out Loud, proclaiming that 2011 will be the year that the whole net neutrality issue explodes.

Let’s clear up this first misconception.

It will not explode.

The first reality about this is that it won’t explode because it is not an election year in the US.

The second reality is that it will not explode because; as many people have pointed out, both before and after this latest poll published to get big tech press, the majority of American do not know what the hell net neutrality even means; and a larger percentage of those people couldn’t give a shit about it.

Net neutrality is a nebulous term at the best of times but it becomes even more so when you have companies and governments using the concept as a political football; which is exactly what the companies involved in the business want to happen.

The only thing exploding is the general consumers heads as they here the term being thrown around because for the most part if it doesn’t interfere with their Facebooking or getting email they couldn’t care less.

The next  misconception: it will sort itself out, we don’t need to worry about it.

No, it won’t sort itself out.

At least not in a way that will benefit the consumer in the long run because of the simple reality is that access to the Internet is controlled by corporations.

One doesn’t need a degree in economics or business to know that the prime purpose of any corporation is to make as much money as possible with the least amount of expenditures.

Granted, setting up, maintaining, and improving the infrastructure behind the web that we use every day is expensive; but, the fact is that the businesses involved will do whatever they can to postpone improvements for as long as they can.

In our business world corporate growth often means consolidation and acquisitions. With consolidation we have fewer but larger companies who control bigger segments of a market and can do so with lesser repercussions. Then of course is the mindset, especially amongst providers is that instead of having to pay for content to provide acquire the companies already doing that and control even more of the market.

The corporate world is about control and reducing any competition as much as they can. It is no different when it comes to companies that provide access to the Internet. We are constantly seeing consolidation amongst the access providers; and with the Comcast and NBC deal we are seeing the content provider acquisition part of the equation in all its glory.

There is a growing lack of competition and the end result that the end user will have fewer and fewer options. As this happens we will see the growth of trends of things like caps and traffic management; which are already occurring, increase and having to pay a higher prices for those services.

One last misconception is that this is just all about politics.

The reality here is that this is exactly what the companies what you think. The fact is that this doesn’t, and doesn’t need to have anything to do with the government. There is absolutely no reason for the government to get involved.

Yet we find companies that continue to push the limits of the consumer until the government has no choice but to step in due to the consumer demanding that somebody do something to stop the gouging of their wallets. When this point is reached the companies don’t care if the government gets involved because they will have achieved their goals.

The first goal being that they have reached the top end of the tolerance level of the consumer so even if the government forces them to step back they are already ahead of the game. the second point is that they now have given the consumer a much bigger target for future unrest and anger – the government. Now they will be able to point the finger at what ever government is in power and say – don’t blame us … blame them knowing full well that even as much as the consumer may hate the corporation they hate government worse.

Is net neutrality important?

In my opinion – yes.

Should the government be forced to have to step in?

No they shouldn’t.

Will they be forced to?

Yes.

Will the Web end up benefiting if they do?

No.

2011, Net Neutrality, A Couple of Misconceptions and Realities is a post from: The Inquisitr

Mr. President you may have heard about this thing called the Internet, it’s that thing that has become a global backbone of communication, e-commerce, and yes some really silly crap called Social Media. Here’s the thing though – there seems to be some real idiots in your Congress who seem to be under the delusion that the Internet is the property of the United States of America.

In particular is a real goof-ball by the name of Senator Joe Lieberman who believes that it is your country’s god-given right to regulate the Internet. Now I would try and explain the reality of the situation and how the Internet works but I have a strong feeling that I would only end up with a massive headache from banging my head against the wall one too many times.

However it is this Senator Lieberman who, with delusions of grandeur, is proposing a new bill titled Protecting Cyberspace as a National Asset Act, or PCNAA (pdf), that would effectively give you – The President – a kill switch over the Internet.

Did I happen to mention that the Internet is global?

Just because the US has decided, through ICANN, to keep control of the root servers of the Internet doesn’t make you the owners of the Internet by default; regardless of Lieberman’s delusions to the contrary. The fact is that this is just a back door attempt to bring the Internet under the control of the Department of Homeland Security as Declan McCullagh points out in his reporting of this power grab (emphasis mine):

Lieberman’s proposal would form a powerful and extensive new Homeland Security bureaucracy around the NCCC, including “no less” than two deputy directors, and liaison officers to the Defense Department, Justice Department, Commerce Department, and the Director of National Intelligence. (How much the NCCC director’s duties would overlap with those of the existing assistant secretary for infrastructure protection is not clear.)

The NCCC also would be granted the power to monitor the “security status” of private sector websites, broadband providers and other internet components. Lieberman’s legislation requires the NCCC to provide “situational awareness of the security status” of the portions of the internet that are inside the United States — and also those portions in other countries that, if disrupted, could cause significant harm.

Of course there is the typical sweet deal being dangled in front the companies to con them into signing on this stupidity – immunity from civil lawsuits. There is no doubt that companies would fall all over themselves to ass-kiss up to Lieberman and his bill because this could save them millions upon millions of future profits.

I understand the need for the United States to protect itself and its agencies to protect themselves from possible cyber-attacks but that doesn’t give you Mr. President the right to declare some sort of Internet State of Emergency and inflict your paranoid responses on the rest of the world. Just look at your responses to suspicious packages and how whole sections of cities like New York are shut down.

Given that this type of reaction is typical the effect of your Internet kill switch would make the whole web resemble Twitter’s Fail Whale but on a global scale.

If you and the government really believe that the Internet within the US borders need to be hardened fine – but do it the right way. Make the companies and government agencies most likely to be attack responsible for hardening their own systems.

You want to pass laws fine but make sure they are laws that make the banks, Wall Street, ICANN, the companies responsible of the root servers, public utilities – make them responsible. If anyone is to be held accountable it is the very people that the Lieberman bill would give a free pass to.

Just remember Mr. President the US does not and has never owned the Internet. It was created as a border-less way to communicate and share information – both good and bad. The Internet is the ultimate agnostic regardless of what the entertainment industry thinks or what what the idiot Senator might believe.

image courtesy of Burtonf166

Memo to the President: Hands of the Internet is a post from: The Inquisitr

I ran across this little tidbit of news over the Christmas holidays and it amazes me that more people aren’t asking if what is being reported is something we really want to see happening.

You see Google has been running a bit of an advertising campaign built around the fact that over 60% of the United States state governments are using part or all of Google’s Apps. I realized that the open source and freetard brigade will argue that this is a great thing given that it boost the whole idea of free and open source software in the public eye but stop and think for a minute.

60% plus. That’s 60% or better of states who are storing supposedly private and extremely personal data of ours on a third party server of a company thats sole purpose is to index all the information in the world.

Uhm .. did you give your state government permission to to this?

Are you really comfortable with the fact that Google is now storing data that it has no business being near?

As pointed out by Sherri over at philosecurity

In other words, according to Google, United States state governments have literally handed over our public data to be held and managed by a private company which has well-publicized partnerships with other governments such as China. The data is physically stored in Google’s buildings, on Google’s servers, managed by Google’s employees. This means Google now controls our government’s access to it’s own data.

I’m all for open source and free crap but when it comes to our data being held by any government it has no business being stored on a corporate server – especially a company with partnerships that include places like China.

Sorry this is a bad idea and one that should be stopped. It will only end badly.

Government data, our data, now held by Google is a post from: The Inquisitr

We are coming up to a watershed moment in the existence of the Internet and very few people seem to care. Right now there are two separate events happening that will have a direct impact on both the Internet we have right now and the one we will have in the future.

While they might seem like two disparate events they are in fact being lead by one industry. Under the guise of copyright infringement and piracy the entertainment as a whole is spearheading the adoption of the Digital Economy Bill in England and the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) which would be global in impact.

It is easy to shrug our collective shoulders over the Digital Economy Bill suggesting that it’s strictly a British problem and doesn’t affect the rest of at all. Well one only has to look at the persuasive use of CCTV in Britain and how it became the template for other countries like the U.S. to follow suite to see how foolish that argument is.

When I first wrote about the Digital Economy Bill here back in August of 2009 it was in light of how the original bill was changed after a weekend meeting get-together on the Greek island of Corfu. This little confab consisted of Lord Mandelson, the British business secretary, members of the Rothschild banking dynasty; who paid for the retreat, and David Geffen, an American billionaire record producer.

Prior to this retreat in sunny Corfu the Digital Economy Bill was actually a forward looking document that the British government hoped would take the country into the next millennium. After the trip though it suddenly became a totally different beast all together that saw everyone using the Internet as a criminal.

Now just this past week thanks to Cory Doctorow at Boing Boing we find out that this new Digital Economy Bill that is now before the British Parliament not only will treat web users as criminals but it is also being used to create a process that will see unelected officials able to do just about anything without Parliamentary oversight or control as long as it is done in the name of protecting copyright.

Doctorow was able to get his hands on some reliable information (via a British Labour Government source) and points to the three specific arguments that Lord Mandelson uses for justifying the revamped bill

1. The Secretary of State would get the power to create new remedies for online infringements (for example, he could create jail terms for file-sharing, or create a “three-strikes” plan that costs entire families their internet access if any member stands accused of infringement)

2. The Secretary of State would get the power to create procedures to “confer rights” for the purposes of protecting rightsholders from online infringement. (for example, record labels and movie studios can be given investigative and enforcement powers that allow them to compel ISPs, libraries, companies and schools to turn over personal information about Internet users, and to order those companies to disconnect users, remove websites, block URLs, etc)

3. The Secretary of State would get the power to “impose such duties, powers or functions on any person as may be specified in connection with facilitating online infringement” (for example, ISPs could be forced to spy on their users, or to have copyright lawyers examine every piece of user-generated content before it goes live; also, copyright “militias” can be formed with the power to police copyright on the web)

As Doctorow points out in this post, and a follow-up to it, unelected officials like Lord Mandelson would have the power to create and run a private copyright police force that wouldn’t answer to anyone.

But that’s just for starters. The real meat is in the story we broke yesterday: Peter Mandelson, the unelected Business Secretary, would have to power to make up as many new penalties and enforcement systems as he likes. And he says he’s planning to appoint private militias financed by rightsholder groups who will have the power to kick you off the internet, spy on your use of the network, demand the removal of files or the blocking of websites, and Mandelson will have the power to invent any penalty, including jail time, for any transgression he deems you are guilty of. And of course, Mandelson’s successor in the next government would also have this power.

Now it would be a common reaction from the rest of us in the world to shrug our shoulders saying ah it’s a British problem, if they want to let this happen it’s their own fault and carry on our way. The problem is that besides recent history showing that this is a short-sighted position to take there is also another much more subtle and potentially dangerous change to individual country laws.

Under the guise of protecting corporate copyrights a new global treaty; think WTO, WIPO, WHO etc., called Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) is being created and agreed to in secret. The secrecy around ACTA is so persuasive that anyone viewing the actual agreement and participating in the talks around it are forced to sign a Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA). The Electronic Frontier Foundation has even had to go to court to force the release of any documents surrounding the Treaty.

This is a treaty that has been written by the entertainment industry and then promoted to governments around the world and being the necessary way to protect the status quo in a world that is changing to fast for many people – especially in the corporate world. Both here in Canada and in the U.S. this treaty will fundamentally change the way that copyright laws are written and policed – just as we are seeing in England with their Digital Economy Bill.

In an article published in the Yale Journal of International Law (PDF version) Eddan Katz and Gwen Hinze wrote

In brief, the ACTA process has been deliberately more secretive than customary practices in international decision-making bodies to evade the debates about intellectual property (IP) at established multilateral institutions. The Office of the USTR has chosen to negotiate ACTA as a sole executive agreement. Because of a loophole in democratic accountability on sole executive agreements, the Office of the USTR can sign off on an IP Enforcement agenda without any formal congressional involvement at all.

via Cory Doctorow

In Canada Professor Michael Geist; Canada Research Chair in Internet and E-Commerce Law at the University of Ottawa, has been heavily involved in trying to keep this treaty in the public eye. You can read his work in this area here at his blog but he points to the spin that the organizations and governments involved in foisting this treaty on the world are putting around the secrecy.

In their opinion this secrecy is just normal business when working on large treaties like this but the facts; and history, tell a different story.

In the face of widespread criticism of the lack of ACTA transparency, participating governments and music industry lobbyists have claimed that the transparency issue is much ado about nothing.  As governments seek to keep relevant information secret, those same governments released a joint statement last week arguing that “it is accepted practice during trade negotiations among sovereign states to not share negotiating texts with the public at large, particularly at earlier stages of the negotiation.”

It is important to emphatically state that this is simply not the case for many multilateral agreements and the activities of international organizations that typically serve as the forum for global agreement discussions.  U.S. NGO groups have made a strong case for how ACTA’s lack of transparency is out-of-step with many other global norm setting exercises.

Michael Masnick at Techdirt also has a good post where he examines this argument that secrecy is normal and that any open discussion about ACTA is nothing more than a distraction.

A third point raised is that this isn’t a “treaty” but a “sole executive agreement,” so we shouldn’t worry since it can’t change the law. Except, by categorizing it as such, it’s actually a loophole that could potentially take Congress out of the process of reviewing or approving anything that’s in the agreement, and then just wait for the “but we must live up to our international obligations” to start pouring out of lobbyists and industry lawyers’ mouths.

This isn’t a treat about securing copyrights for rights holders as much as it is a method by which the entertainment industry of the U.S. can exert a stranglehold on the Internet. James Love at Knowledge Ecology International has a list of who the White House shared the ACTA text with; under an NDA, but what is more interesting is seeing just who some of the corporations behind this push for the acceptance of ACTA are.

In this regard Michael Masnick has a list of entertainment companies that signed a letter that was sent to the government supporting ACTA; which considering that they helped draft the treaty shouldn’t be too surprising.

Advertising Photographers of America
American Association of Independent Music (A2IM)
American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (AFTRA)
American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP)
American Society of Media Photographers, Inc. (ASMP)
Association of American Publishers (AAP)
Broadcast Music, Inc (BMI)
Commercial Photographers International
Directors Guild of America (DGA)
Evidence Photographers International Council
Independent Film and Television Alliance (IFTA)
International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE)
Motion Picture Association of America, Inc. (MPAA)
National Music Publishers Association (NMPA)
NBC Universal
News Corporation
Picture Archive Council of America (PACA)
Professional Photographers of America (PPA)
Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA)
Reed Elsevier Inc.
Society of Sport & Event Photographers
Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA)
Stock Artists Alliance
Student Photographic Society
The Advertising Photographers of America
The Walt Disney Company
Time Warner, Inc.
Universal Music Group
Viacom Inc.
Warner Music Group

In combination these two seemingly disparate items might seem to be connected but the fact is that behind both of them are the powerful people in the entertainment industry that don’t want to boat rocked. In fact they are doing everything they can to get the boat back into dry dock and under lock and key.

We might like to believe that the Internet will always be open and free but the reality is that there are some strong forces at work that want to turn it into something totally different. It is my fear that with the secrecy surrounding things like ACTA and the Digital Economy Bill along with people’s seeming nonchalant attitudes we will end up with something totally different than we dream of.

That would be a sad day.

The usual suspects are threatening to dismantle our Internet is a post from: The Inquisitr

It is always a good idea when trying to give someone who speaks a different language a cute little gift that has a saying in their language on it that you get the translation correct. It is especially important when you are dealing with international politics and how touchy politicians can be over something said incorrectly.

However it seems that someone in the U.S. State Department forgot to double check a recently translation that was used to engrave a special little gift Secretary of State Hillary Clinton gave to her Russian counterpart, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.

"I would like to present you with a little gift that represents what President Obama and Vice President Biden and I have been saying and that is: ‘We want to reset our relationship and so we will do it together,’" Clinton said, presenting Lavrov with the red button.

What the foreign minister got, however, was a button that said "peregruzka," which translates into Russian as "overcharge" or "overload" (depending on the context). Oops…

"You got it wrong," Lavrov teased Clinton, but said he would put it on his desk anyway.

Source: ABC News – Political Radar Blog

As Zoli Erdos suggested on his blog maybe next time instead of using a human translator they just farm it out to Google Translate

[Clinton/Lavrov picture courtesy of ABC News / Google Translate graphic courtesy of Zoli Erdos]

One less U.S. State Department translator has a job now is a post from: The Inquisitr

Jeff Nolan at Venture Chronicles notes the inconsistencies; a judge refused to dismiss the case against Universal that claims the company issued an improper DMCA claim for a video of a toddler dancing to a Prince song at the same time that companies like DirecTV are adding DRM to lock programming down to a single box for viewing.

As more and more individuals start to fight back against some of the Draconian enforcement of intellectual property laws, however, Fair Use and public domain may win in the end. A small discovery noted nine years ago by a disgruntled former Disney employee may put an end to the endless copyright extensions driven by the Walt Disney Company‘s protection of Mickey Mouse‘s copyright. While only the older “Steamboat Willie” version of Mickey Mouse would enter the public domain if the evidence shows that Disney’s ownership of the copyright is questionable, it would still be a symbolic victory for a country whose intellectual property laws are some of the most convoluted in the world.

On Which Side Will Intellectual Property Laws Fall? is a post from: The Inquisitr