Anonymous has called for an Internet blackout to protest CISPA, the much maligned cybersecurity bill that threatens your privacy more than it protects it. But without the support of Reddit, which co-sponsored last year's SOPA blackout, the Web isn't listening.

About 200 hundred sites have joined the #CISPABlackout today in protest of CISPA, which last week passed the House of Representatives. That may sound like a big number, but the list mostly consists of small sites within the hacker community. That's a big contrast to the last year's SOPA protests, which drew support from huge organizations like Google and Wikipedia.

Blackout your website: (requires some basic HTML/CSS knowledge): bit.ly/11dtXv6#CISPABlackout

— Anonymous (@YourAnonNews) April 22, 2013

Exceptions include the nonprofit Fight for the Future, which has tweeted solidarity but has not blacked out its site. Another is Stan Lee's Comikaze, the comic book convention backed by the former Marvel Comics head honcho, which has blacked out its site.

A Reddit Divided

Reddit itself appears conflicted over the CISPA blackout. Some Reddit sections, aka subreddits, have switched their background color to black and added a CISPA protest banner and link, but have stopped short of a full blackout that would inconvenience users by obscuring links. As of about 11am PT, subreddits including "pics," "politics," "funny," "askreddit" and "technology") have black backgrounds, although their listed links remain visible in the foreground. Reddit's front page and subreddits such as "news" and "worldnews" remain un-blackened.

It's a clear case of the hacker collective overestimating its influence, as my ReadWrite colleague Dan Rowinski suggested to me in chat earlier today. "Without Reddit, it is just Anonymous proclaiming something into its own echo chamber," he wrote.

It also doesn't help that Internet firms themselves are divided on CISPA. Microsoft and Facebook may have recently walked back their support for the bill — which, by the way, faces a veto threat from President Obama — but Google hasn't taken a position. And a rogue's gallery of telcos, ISPs and other tech firms support CISPA.

CISPA threatens our privacy by essentially giving the government a blank check to monitor all of our online communication, without a warrant. So a sign of solidarity blacking out the Web would be a good thing. But it seems the collective isn't as influential in garnering support as it is when its making cyberattacks. Which is too bad, because this mission would actually be a good thing.

Below is a video from Anonymous explaining more about the blackout:

If you want to contact your local senator or congressperson, check out this list of contact information from Anonymous. Here's some background on Anonymous' plans and how you can further support the blackout.

Lead image via Imgur, although it's circulating across the Internet and its provenance is unknown

Frustrated and bitter that laws like SOPA and PIPA have yet to get pushed through Congress without those pesky constituents objecting to turning the U.S. government into muscle for entertainment industry, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) is taking out its anger on Google. The music industry lobbying group is accusing the search engine giant of failing to effectively demote search results that lead people to those nasty little download sites.

In a blog post on the RIAA site yesterday, Steven M. Marks, EVP & General Counsel, RIAA made it clear that the music copyright association thinks that Google, despite making some headway, remains a day late and a dollar short.

"We recognize and appreciate that Google has undertaken some positive steps to address links to illegal music on its network," said Steven M. Marks, the RIAA's executive vice president and general counsel. "Unfortunately, our initial analysis concludes that so far Google's pledge six months ago to demote pirate sites remains unfulfilled. Searches for popular music continue to yield results that emphasize illegal sites at the expense of legitimate services, which are often relegated to later pages. And Google's auto-complete function continues to lead users to many of those same illicit sites."

(This isn't the first time: see also RIAA Slams Google's Anti-Piracy Efforts, Demands Even More Unreasonable Measures.)

Testing The Claims

I wanted to see if the RIAA might be overstating its concerns, something that they've been known to do before. So I performed a little one-man experiment, using the song "Some Nights" by Fun. as the guinea pig. Your mileage may vary, of course, but my quick-and-dirty test revealed that the RIAA may have some valid claims.

A search for "Fun. album" returned a first, second, and third page of results that were absent of any results that would seem to contain illegal downloads, with the bottom of the third page containing three DMCA takedown notices that point to the Electronic Frontier Foundation's ChillingEffects.org for more information.

But down in the "Searches related to" section of all of the results pages, "fun. some nights download" was among the listings, and a click-through pulled in the plenty of links to aggregate MP3 download sites, mixed with a few legitimate sites, like iTunes (#3), Amazon (#7) and the official video on YouTube (#8).

As for the RIAA's claim that Google's AutoComplete will suggest search terms that could lead users to sites containing unlicensed copies of songs, I found this was indeed true. By the time I typed "fun. some", Google had filled in four results:

fun. some nights
fun. some nights lyrics
fun. some nights meaning
fun. some nights mp3

On a whim, I turned on SafeSearch to see if that would make a difference. Results did differ on some search results, such as "fun. some nights download", where legitimate sites (like the Wikipedia entry for the album) were moved up slightly on the first page of results, but the sketchy download sites were still in full-glory display.

I should also note that the RIAA did not take Microsoft's Bing service to task, even thought the same experiment on Bing yielded very similar results, even in the auto-complete results. Type in "fun. some" on the Bing home page and you get these helpful suggestions:

fun. some nights lyrics
fun. some nights
fun. some nights meaning
fun. some nights torrent
fun. some nights video
fun. some nights album download
fun. some nights mp3
fun. some nights review

Search Engines As Police?

Based on these (admittedly quick) search tests, it seems like the RIAA has a point, and Google is failing to block apparent pirate sites on its search results, and its demotion policy announced in August 2012 isn't really working all that well, either.

But let's be clear: Google has said all along it wasn't going to block site results from any site unless it receives a specific copyright removal request from the rights owner.

"Only copyright holders know if something is authorized, and only courts can decide if a copyright has been infringed; Google cannot determine whether a particular webpage does or does not violate copyright law. So while this new signal will influence the ranking of some search results, we won't be removing any pages from search results unless we receive a valid copyright removal notice from the rights owner," senior vice president of engineering Amit Singhal wrote back in August.

At the time, what Google said it would do was add a new signal to how it ranks search results.

"Starting next week, we will begin taking into account a new signal in our rankings: the number of valid copyright removal notices we receive for any given site. Sites with high numbers of removal notices may appear lower in our results," Singhal stated.

The RIAA is contending in its statement this week that Google has failed to live up to that promise.

One has to wonder, though, if trying to keep up with the sheer number of sites that provide access to unlicensed media content is comparable to spitting on a forest fire. If the signal for page ranking depends in some way on number of takedown attempts, perhaps the RIAA and other rights holders are not sending enough signals. Or maybe these sites know who to game other ranking signals to boost their status on Google and Bing search results.

It is very easy to point fingers at Google and Bing and accuse them of not doing enough to keep people away from pirated media. If you forget, of course, that this not their job.

Complaining about the auto-completing results would seem to be a more valid concern, until you remember that there could be legitimate results for "download X."

The RIAA wants to protect the rights of its artists and producers, a valid concern. But it is not clear at all that Google, Microsoft and the other search engines should be relied upon as key allies in the recording industry's ongoing quest to stomp piracy. Search engines' missions are to provide data, not analyze that data for legality.

Despite what they're asking for here, I suspect even the most vehement anti-piracy activists would not care for some of the implications of a world where search engines were to undertake that goal.

The Senate will be taking on much-needed digital rights legislation in the new 113th Congress, including requiring law enforcement to have warrants before poking around online communications.

In a speech at Georgetown University Wednesday, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt). stressed the need for defending civil liberties, protecting privacy, improving transparency and making a push to require a warrant before law enforcement has carte blanche to read people's emails, social media messages and other modes of online communication.

We're Trusting These Guys?

Congress has been questioned of late for implementing some eyebrow-raising initiatives that have thrown the Fourth Amendment under the bus and seemingly worked towards the opposite of Leahy's plans (think FISA, the Video Privacy Protection Act, and half a dozen other problematic regulations).  But if Leahy has his way, this new Congress could create legislation to help both consumers and creators protect their data. Leahy, who voted against FISA and was the chief proponent of last year's U.S. patent law reform, may be the right man to push these bills along.

In his speech, Leahy expressed concern over the potential loss of privacy that comes with the expanding use of drones in civilian life. The Federal Aviation Administration predicts that by the end of the decade, 30,000 commercial and government drones could be flying over U.S. skies. With that outcome literally on the horizon, Leahy plans on making drones the subject of Congressional hearings, indicating that legislators need to focus to make sure that technology will not be used to erode peoples’ privacy.

"I am concerned about the growing use of drones by Federal and local authorities to spy on Americans here at home," he said Wednesday. "We make a tragic mistake thinking that merely giving up more and more of our privacy will make us safer. It will not. Security and liberty are both essential in a free society, and we cannot forsake one for the other."

Leahy also spoke about insuring transparency, specifically referring to press freedoms. The son of Vermont printers said he has "concerns about the press being shut down." While he's against the release of classified government documents (think WikiLeaks), he says he will work to "make sure that legislative efforts to prevent classified leaks does not infringe upon our fundamental freedoms, including freedom of the press."

It's a pretty tricky balance Leahy is striking here, but this may be a way of saying he doesn't support penalizing journalists who publish formerly privileged documents.

Walling Off Our Data

The last, and perhaps most important, tenet of Leahy's plan was a promise to update outdated cyber security laws, specifically the 27-year-old Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA). Right now the ECPA gives police and government agencies the ability to read people's emails and digital communications - without a warrant.

Leahy, who turns 73 in March, has said the reason he's stayed chairman of the Judiciary Committee is to reform ECPA. He says electronic documents should have the same legal protection as paper documents. It won't be easy to fix this, but he's making it a top priority.

"It is going to be a fight," he said in his speech. "But I think people are realizing they don't have to give up their ability to use the Internet while at the same time guarding their freedom."

What The Speech Didn't Say

However, for all the good will towards modifying these laws, a few major items were missing from Leahy's speech. Another potential change to the ECPA is currently on the table in the Senate, one which would require all text messages to be archived and available to law enforcement. This under-the-radar item is a proposal and yet to be brought to the Congressional floor. Let's hope Leahy can muster enough support to put the kibosh on this proposed legislation.

And let's not forget the thousand pound elephant in the room: Very much missing from the speech was an update on whether Congress will push for new versions of SOPA and PIPA. Leahy himself seems to have one foot in the pool and one out when you look at his record. This is the Senator who wrote PIPA and COICA (Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act). Yet he was also behind a failed FISA amendment reform that would have shortened the law and decreased the enforcement period to three years -- which would have been good. Based on this track record, either he erred and learned from these past mistakes...or we're all buying what he's selling. And it's not worth it. Fingers crossed the truth is the former, not the latter. 

Today, Friday, is Internet Freedom Day. And as the the world celebrates the life of the too-soon-departed Aaron Swartz and the one year anniversary of the Internet blackout victory against SOPA and PIPA, big change looms. Let's hope Leahy has our best interests at heart when it comes to protecting our privacy. 

Image courtesy of Shutterstock.

2012 was a big year for music. No, I'm not talking about Adele, Call Me Maybe or the Tupac hologram. The big news this year were the shifts at the intersection of music and technology that occurred as the industry continued to figure out its digital future. 

Indeed, the biggest moments in music tech this year all had to do with piracy or the tricky evolution of a business model to replace the one that started dying a decade ago. 

1. The Death Of SOPA / Megaupload Raid 

These two events were not officially related, but they happened within 24 hours of each other and they both helped frame the debate about content piracy. In late January, the uber-controversial anti-piracy bills called SOPA and PIPA were tabled by the U.S. Congress after massive online protests. The death of SOPA meant the fabric of the Internet would be spared from the wrath of the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) and set the stage for new legislative battles.  

Just as that attempt at fighting piracy ended, an even more dramatic one began when New Zealand police - by request of the U.S. Justice Department - arrested Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom and several of his colleagues in a military-style raid. The hacker group Anonymous responded with large-scale Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks that took out the Department of Justice's website. For the first time, the so-called "piracy wars" started to look like an actual war. 

The Megaupload raid marked the beginning of a lengthy legal procedure, but it also raised major questions about the rights of non-infringing cyberlocker users and caused similar services to get more serious about fighting piracy, if they didn't shut themselves down all together. 

2. Lars Ulrich Hugs Sean Parker, Embraces Spotify 

There could hardly have been a more symbolic official end to the Napster era and more importantly, the beginning of one in which all-you-stream music subscription services are seen as a legitimate way forward for the industry. Metallica drummer Lars Ulrich not only shared a stage with Napster cofounder Sean Parker to announce the band's arrival on Spotify, he hugged him. 

Major questions remain about the viability of Spotify's business model and whether it can fairly compensate artists, but it's still early in the game and the fact that Metallica has embraced the model is a positive sign. Don't hold your breath for The Beatles, though. 

3. BitTorrent Goes Legit

2012 was the year the strict association between the word BitTorrent and piracy started to erode. It still has a long way to go, but BitTorrent, Inc. has been aggressively marketing itself as a legitimate content distribution platform and teaming up with established artists and authors to prove it. 

Author Tim Ferriss may be the most high-profile content producer to partner with Bit Torrent, but musicians have been experimenting with the platform as well. After Pretty Lights published a bundle of free music and videos on BitTorrent, it soared to the top of Pirate Bay's download chart, the DJ saw a 700% increase in traffic to his website, collected 100,000 email addresses and, probably not coincidentally, sold out two concerts at the Red Rocks amphitheater in Colorado. For musicians, BitTorrent may provide an unexpected path to revenue.

4. Internet Radio Fairness Act Introduced

Internet radio providers like Pandora and iHeartRadio are expensive to operate. That's largely because these companies operate under a different royalty rate regime than terrestrial and satellite radio stations, both of which pay far less than Pandora to copyright holders. 

In September, a bill called the Internet Radio Fairness Act (IRFA) was introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives that aimed to level the playing field. Record labels, royalty collection organizations and some artists were less than thrilled with the IRFA. Congressional testimony and debate got underway in November and the issue is expected to continue to be a contentious one in 2013. 

Whatever happens with the IRFA as it was originally drafted (many predict its demise), something needs to give, and that something will have to balance the need for innovation with the rights of those who create music for a living. The end result of the debate that kicked off in 2012 will have a huge impact on radio's future. 

5. Amanda Palmer's Blockbuster Crowdfunding Experiment

2012 was the year that independent musicians, desperate for a new business model, started taking the crowdfunding craze seriously. In an age when revenue is harder and harder to come by for musicians, many turned to fans to help fund the recording of their album, production of music videos and other projects.

There were plenty of successful campaigns, but none got more attention than that of Amanda Palmer. The singer took to Kickstarter to fund the release of her album and ended up blowing past the $100,000 goal to rake in more than $1.1 million. Suddenly, crowdfunding looked like a viable model for musicians. 

The Amanda Palmer example is not without its caveats, though. For one, not all independent artists will have a fan base as rabid as the famously social media-savvy Palmer. About half of all music-related Kickstarter projects fail to reach their goal. For the right projects and artists, though, crowdfunding can work quite well, as Palmer demonstrated. 

Any artists that do luck out on Kickstarter might want to do their best to avoid the public relations headache incurred by Palmer after she invited unpaid musicians to play with her onstage - and was subsequently lambasted across the Web. 

Image courtesy of Shutterstock.

In the desert oasis of Dubai, Internet change is brewing. In a hush-hush closed-door meeting, government representatives from around the world have gathered this week to decide the future of the Internet. The freedom of the Internet.  

The International Telecommunication Union for the World Conference on International Telecommunications is a 12-day conference for nations to potentially expand their control over the Internet. Topics range from the esoteric to the critical: data privacy, cybersecurity, international mobile roaming, equipment specifications and the like.

More than 193 members states are part of the union, established more than 100 years ago, in the telegraph era, It's now  a United Nations specialized agency focusing on telecommunications and information and communication technology. 

Sunday, Google executive and co-founding architect of the Internet, Vint Cerf, warned that the goal of the secret meeting is to "allow governments to justify the censorship of legitimate speech, or even cut off Internet access in their countries." 

Cerf calls for the Internet to stand up for its rights.

What You Can Do

A slew of petition and protest sites have opened on the topic. In fact, as of late Sunday night, nearly 1 million people worldwide had signed an anti-regulation petition on freeandopen. Other petitions include a Google take-action site (no word on signatures gathered) and the Protect Global Internet Freedom site, with about 35,000 signers from 167 countries.

Indeed, a viral movement similar to last year's campaign against new Internet regulation in the United States (see What You Need To Know About SOPA In 2012) is coalescing.

The bottom line is the Internet was made by people, not governments. And governments being governments, they want to control people. This threatens the very infrastructure that so many depend on every day.   

"The Internet works," says security researcher Dan Kaminsky. Kaminsky has advised Fortune 500 companies for more than a decade, and helped find and fix a major flaw in the Web's Domain Name System. He's one of only seven Recovery Key Shareholders with the ability to restore the DNS root keys (he's the American representative). Saying he knows what's best for the Internet is an understatement. 

"There were many attempts at making large scale information systems that most assuredly did not work," he said.  "For example, MiniTel, which should have been one of France's major exports, was just shut down."

Kaminsky says what kills every attempt at change are the gatekeepers of the Internet, not the creators.  

"States are in a hard situation," he said. "They are under a remarkable amount of pressure to do something about this messy thing that runs so much of business and life now. But the temptation is to make it the very thing that we know does not work, does not scale, does not drive business. What's happening at ITU is the discussion of whether this path should be taken anyway. I'm glad Google is pushing back."

All Talk?

Follow the conference (#WCIT12) on Twitter. Here's an opening tweet from the union's Twitter account: 

#WCIT12 @un SG Opening Ceremony message: management of ICT should be transparent, democratic & inclusive of all stakeholders

— ITU (@ITU) December 3, 2012

Toby Johnson, a communication staffer for the ITU tweeted to me that all plenary sessions are open to the press, and that the ITU  are aiming for consensus over voting. 

@adampopescu we hope for no voting rather aiming for consensus. The main decisions are made in Plenary sessions which are open.

— Toby Johnson (@Toby_Johnson) December 3, 2012

Those talks will be available live and via webcast. Check out Storify to follow along.

Here's a full schedule of the two-week event. Closed-door sessions likely will be the scene of handshake deals that will determine our future. 

Watch this video to see exactly what's at stake:

Is This Legal?

Harvard-trained lawyer and Wirelawyer founder Matthew Tollin says it's all legal, and calls the meeting of historic significance.

"From a legal perspective, the governmental representatives meeting at the World Conference on International Telecommunications are answerable to their citizens," Tollin said.

In other words, the same anti-regulatory backlash that whipped U.S. lawmakers, dissuading them from implementing unpopular changes, could swap global bureaucrats. Let's hope so.

Tollin said that U.S. sentiment in the meeting will strongly influence the final outcome. However, China, Iran and Russia will still push for greater controls. 

"It's a great opportunity for us to show leadership on this issue and not side with repressive governments around the world that want to stifle free speech on the Web," Tollin said.   

Let's hope that the people make enough noise to be heard.

Photo Courtesy of Shutterstock