Stop Online Piracy Act

How Bay Area Corporations Resemble Their (Human) Neighbors

Debates over the Internet Bring Out the Inanity

​The Internet conundrum is so difficult that it, like all difficult problems, has tended to attract people who don't want to address it, but to oversimplify it and then fight full-tilt for whatever far-end-of-the-spectrum "side" they've chosen. This is true of all complicated matters of public c ... More >>

SOPA, Limbaugh, Komen: This Is What Happens When the Mob is Right

​There is far too much cheerleading for the "wisdom of crowds." The undiscerning among us, often motivated by an understandable (if often mindless) disgust with institutions, tend to employ buzzwords like "crowdsourcing" and to preach the idea that "the people" are always right even if "the people ... More >>

Copyright Owners Continue to Tilt at Windmills

​Given the intensity of the debates over digital piracy, you'd almost think that if one side or the other were to "win," the question would be decided: If critics of copyright holders were victorious, piracy would run rampant and the media industry would be brought to its knees; if the copyright o ... More >>

Megaupload Bust Highlights Absurdity of SOPA/PIPA

​Last week, just as two ill-conceived anti-piracy bills were disintegrating in Congress in the face of a massive online protest, the FBI, with help from foreign governments, was busting Megaupload, one of the biggest sources of pirated digital goods. The timing was interesting, though the feds s ... More >>

Anonymous Attempts to "Bring Down" Facebook

A day without Wikipedia was one thing, but can you imagine your life without Facebook? That's one way to test your allegiance to Anonymous, the online hacktivist group, best known locally for revealing personal information of BART police officers. The group is asking you to set aside your social-net ... More >>

SOPA Might Be Bad Policy, but It's Not Censorship

​If you're reading this, chances are that you regularly consume media online. And if you regularly consume media online, you're almost certainly seeing and reading more today than you know what to do with about the federal Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and Protect Intellectual Property Act (PIPA). ... More >>

Hacker Group Anonymous Takes Up Arms in SOPA Battle

​The "hacktivist" network known as Anonymous has stepped into the fray in the battle among legacy media companies, Internet firms, and politicians over the federal Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA).The controversial proposed legislation would make it more difficult for websites to display pirated cont ... More >>

GoDaddy's Wall-to-Wall Awfulness

​Every time GoDaddy makes the news, as it has over the past week by supporting the widely reviled Stop Online Privacy Act (SOPA), the question naturally arises: Waitaminute, this is a domain registrar, right? Right. GoDaddy is in perhaps the dullest business this side of term life insurance, and ... More >>

The Stop Online Piracy Act: The Owner of San Francisco's Burning House Records Explains His Support

​You've probably heard some rumblings about the Stop Online Piracy Act recently. And in all likelihood -- especially if you watch major news channels like CNN -- it's probably all sounded pretty bad and pretty scary. Casey Shafer owns and runs Burning House Records -- an independent, San Francisco ... More >>