The two reps who led the Congressional fight against SOPA have unveiled a draft bill of rights for the Internet. Reps Darryl Issa and Ron Wyden unveiled their proposal at Personal Democracy Forum, and invite the Internet to edit and refine the list on Keep the Web Open. — Read the rest

Tiffiniy from Fight for the Future (standard-bearers in the fight against SOPA) sez,

Congressional hero of the SOPA wars, Senator Wyden, said about cyber security legislation (CISPA and Lieberman-Collins) that is expected to be taken up and passed in early June:

"I believe these bills will encourage the development of an industry that profits from fear and whose currency is Americans' private data.

Zeropaid's Drew Wilson has wrapped up his series examining 20 studies that looked at the impact of filesharing on the sales of entertainment products (previously). He's summed up his conclusions based on the project, comparing the entire corpus to the notorious "Phoenix study" that was used as "evidence" for SOPA:

Claim: One of the claims the Phoenix study that we picked up was that finding a legal framework to stop infringement online has proven to sell politically.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation's Maira Sutton has a long, engrossing account of the popular protest at the Dallas session of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a secretive treaty negotiation that includes a set of copyright rules that leave SOPA and ACTA in the dust. — Read the rest

Former senator Chis Dodd is now the CEO of the MPAA, and was the primary moving force behind SOPA.

He's a bit weird.

His latest act of performance art, or fabulism, or whatever, is to make up a completely bullshit story about the history of Hollywood, in which the Hollywood film industry sprang into being because of strong "IP protection." — Read the rest

Zakkai from Fight for the Future (the folks who brought you the war on SOPA) sez, "Want to fight for Internet privacy with cute cat photos? CISPAcat is a new advice animal that wants nothing more than to spy on your internet activity. — Read the rest

[Video Link] Zach Weissmueller says: " I wanted to pass along Reason.tv's latest to you because I think it would be of interest, especially considering how outspoken Boing Boing was during the SOPA fight. The video is called Too Much Copyright, and I think the title explains it all. — Read the rest

A coalition of US civil liberties organizations have declared this to be Stop Cyber Spying Week, with the goal of scuttling CISPA, the Internet spying bill that promotes web-censorship, bulk surveillance, and warrantless wiretapping by government and Internet companies, while turning over spying governance to the unaccountable, secretive NSA. — Read the rest

CISPA, the pending US cybersecurity bill, is a terrible law, with many of the worst features of SOPA — surveillance and domain seizures and censorship and so on. What's more, it is being supported by one of the largest Web companies in the world: Facebook. — Read the rest

A Reddit user called capt_wink_martindale wrote a piece last month describing what he claims happened to him as a student film-maker who'd licensed the rights to an Isaac Asimov story for his thesis project, and his project was shut down due to legal intimidation from the film studio producing the I, Robot film. — Read the rest

Aziz Ansari, an extremely funny standup comedian, has just released "Dangerously Delicious," a comedy special that follows Louis CK's Live at the Beacon Theater DIY, DRM-free concert video, which netted CK over a million dollars. Ansari, who was an outspoken critic of SOPA and PIPA, is also asking for $5 for his DRM-free download, and has a very good ecommerce setup for buying and downloading the video, and is also using it to promote an upcoming tour. — Read the rest

Forbes's Carol Pinchefsky profiles "4 Public Interest Groups Who Are Fighting for Your Digital Freedom" including EFF, Public Knowledge, TechFreedom and the Center for Democracy and Technology. It's a great cross-section of the different approaches that activist groups take to technology and freedom (but I would lobby for the inclusion of some of the newer groups, like AmericanCensorship.org — Read the rest

Cary Sherman, CEO of the Recording Industry Association of America, has reminded the nation that at his instigation, the largest ISPs in the USA are set to disconnect their customers, and their customers' families, if the companies that Sherman represents makes a series of unsubstantiated accusations of copyright infringement against them. — Read the rest

This may just be the best TED Talk video I've seen: listen.com/Rhapsody founder and extremely funny person (and soon-to-be debut science fiction author) Rob Reid examines the math behind the claims made by the copyright lobby and explains the mindbending awesomeness of the sums used to justify SOPA, PIPA, ACTA and the like. — Read the rest

PR people sometimes say "I loved your coverage of x, perhaps you'd like to hear about y!". The idea is to ensure that I, Esteemed Journalist, know that I am worthy of personalized attention, rather than being an entry on a mailing list. — Read the rest

Michael Geist sez,

The long road of Canadian copyright reform is nearing an end as the Bill C-11 committee concluded hearing from witnesses yesterday and indicated that it will begin a "clause-by-clause" review of the bill starting on Monday. While there will still be some additional opportunities for debate – third reading in the House of Commons, Senate review – the reality is that next week's discussion will largely determine the future of Canadian copyright law.

Nisha from the Open Rights Group sez,

Lawrence Lessig, Cory Doctorow and Wendy Seltzer will be leading this year's Open Rights Group conference (aka ORGCon) in London on 24th March 2012.
From the government snooping on your data to default internet blocking and monitoring to the corporate capture of state and democratic institutions – we'll be covering vast regions of the digital rights sphere.

Former MI5 agent and Guernsey native Annie Machon sez, "In the teeth of all the anti-SOPA and -ACTA demos, the Channel Island of Guernsey is proposing it become an offshore libel tourism haven for image control. The lawyers see this as a potentially huge revenue stream, much as the tax haven laws have been or the island over the last 3 decades." — Read the rest

Spain's brutal new copyright/censorship law, passed at the behest of the US Trade Rep, has gone into effect. Spanish hactivists working with a recording artist have flooded the service with copyright complaints, busying it out so that none of the major labels' complaints can be processed. — Read the rest

Philippe sez, "restorm.com launched rightclearing last week at the prominent Social Music Summit in NYC. The cloud-based music licensing platform provides artists and music professionals a simplified solution that enables them to monetize content through an automated licensing system. In the midst of all the SOPA, PIPA, ACTA rhetoric, and never-ending licensing chaos in the market, rightclearing is well-poised to provide a concise and compelling solution to the needlessly complex licensing labyrinth. — Read the rest