Internet

Rep. Darrell Issa, a senior House Republican, is predicting a dim future for the Stop Online Piracy Act.

"I would expect this bill is not going to become law in this Congress unless these problems are resolved," Issa, whose district includes portions of San Diego and Riverside counties, told CNET in a telephone interview.

The problems he's referring to are a long list of criticisms from opponents of SOPA, including Internet engineers, Web companies including Facebook, Twitter, Google, and Zynga, and civil liberties and human rights groups. Harvard law professor Laurence Tribe says SOPA "should not … Read more

Rep. Jared Polis probably knows more about how Internet businesses work than does any other member of the U.S. Congress.

Which is why it should be no surprise that Polis, 36, a Colorado Democrat who has founded a series of successful Web businesses including the BlueMountainArts.com electronic greeting card company, has become an ardent foe of the Stop Online Piracy Act. SOPA will "destroy the Internet as we know it," he warns.

SOPA represents the latest effort from the Motion Picture Association of America, the Recording Industry Association of America, and their allies to counter what … Read more

A new version of the Stop Online Piracy Act appears to be no more popular than the last one was.

In an effort to head off mounting criticism before a vote on the legislation this Thursday, Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas) today announced a series of tweaks (PDF) to SOPA, which is backed by Hollywood and major record labels but opposed by Internet firms and the Consumer Electronics Association.

But Smith, who heads the House Judiciary committee, stopped short of altering the core of SOPA--meaning that allegedly piratical Web sites could still be made to vanish from the Internet. Deep … Read more

Foes of the controversial Stop Online Piracy Act are rallying opponents ranging from Internet engineers to First Amendment scholar Laurence Tribe ahead of an expected committee vote on the legislation this week.

Their aim is to sway the 39 members of the House Judiciary committee, which oversees copyright law. The panel's chairman is Lamar Smith of Texas, Hollywood's favorite House Republican and the principal author of SOPA, which has drawn what may be an unprecedented public outcry from Internet users and companies including Facebook, Twitter, Mozilla, eBay, and Google.

Tribe, a high-profile Harvard law professor and author of … Read more

A bizarre attempt by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to seize the domain name of a hip-hop blog accused of copyright infringement ended today with the government abruptly abandoning the lawsuit.

Government officials initially trumpeted the seizure of the music blog, DaJaz1.com, and 81 others as an example of the law prevailing over pirates. Attorney General Eric Holder warned at the time that "intellectual property crimes are not victimless," and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) director John Morton proclaimed that "today, we turn the tables on these Internet thieves."

The only problem? It … Read more

A new copyright proposal backed by foes of the Stop Online Piracy Act stops short of trying to delete "rogue" Web sites from the Internet, according to a draft reviewed by CNET.

The so-called OPEN Act, expected to be announced today by Sen. Ron Wyden and Rep. Darrell Issa, takes a less censorial approach. It tries to interrupt the flow of funds to offshore piratical Web sites by targeting only Internet ad networks and "financial transaction providers" such as credit card companies.

Forcing Internet service providers and search engines to pretend that allegedly infringing Web sites … Read more

Critics of a controversial copyright bill known as the Stop Online Piracy Act, or SOPA, are planning to announce an alternative proposal on Thursday, CNET has learned.

Their public discussion draft is intended to provide opponents of the Hollywood-backed SOPA bill, a list that includes much of Silicon Valley, with legislation that they can embrace as a less onerous way to delete "rogue" Web sites from the Internet.

Depending on the details, of course, the new legislation--backed by Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.)--could also be viewed as too restrictive.

The Wyden-Issa draft will … Read more

Sen. Al Franken, who heads a Senate privacy panel, is asking wireless companies and hardware makers exactly how they're using Carrier IQ and what data they're collecting.

A Sprint spokesman confirmed to CNET this morning that the company received a letter from Franken, the Minnesota Democrat who wrote a similar letter to Carrier IQ last week.

Franken also sent letters to AT&T, HTC, Samsung, and Sprint Nextel, according to a report over the weekend in the Minneapolis Star Tribune.

Carrier IQ is software created by an eponymous startup in Mountain View, Calif., that's used by … Read more

A Linux kernel hacker who completed an in-depth analysis of Carrier IQ's controversial software has determined that it's incapable of recording keystrokes or perusing SMS messages and e-mail correspondence.

Dan Rosenberg, who has discovered more than 100 vulnerabilities in the Linux kernel, FreeBSD, and GNU utilities, published a blog post last night that analyzed the data Carrier IQ collects and transmits on a Samsung Epic 4G Touch. He found that contrary to what a slew of initial -- and erroneous -- reports claimed, the Carrier IQ software is not a keylogger and "cannot" be configured as … Read more