Campaign 2012 - Things I've Read On The Internet ...

This comes from a good friend and sums up what we have been seeing on the internet about the Republican Primary -- would bet the list will continue to grow as time goes by:

Campaign 2012 - Things I've Read On The Internet ...

by ThinkFirst

Campaign 2012 - Things I’ve Read On The Internet …

I can’t tell you with any certainty where and when I read all of the
following on the Internet, but here are some fascinating - and often
humorous - bits and pieces of commentary on the election that I have
saved so far …

“Cainwreck” (for his comments on Libya, Pakistan, and other foreign
policy issues) 

“Bachmann-Santorum Cannot Drive” (after a foreign policy debate) 

“Misfit-Mitt” (for conservative comments that trouble liberals and for
liberal comments, and policies, that trouble conservatives) 

“Fib-Newton” (for supporting Gore and Pelosi on the global warming
fraud, for adultery while criticizing Bill Clinton for Monica Lewinsky,
and for claiming to debate Herman Cain when it was not a debate) 

“I want a refund!” (women donors demanding their contributions back
from Herman Cain and conservative talk-hosts wanting their reputations
back for previously promoting him) 

“Cain Can’t Cope” (a blogger on PJ Tatler wrote “Here’s the deal. Herman
Cain seldom knows what he’s talking about and isn’t all that conservative.") 

Definition: “Got Cained­’When a political candidate convinces big money, naive voters, and famoustalk-show hosts to support them then they promote things those people oppose.
Example: The Koch Brothers “got Cained” in 2012 when Herman Cainunexpected­ly supported public employee collective bargaining after theyspent millions electing State legislator­s and governors who opposed it. 

Definition: “A Rick Perry Moment”When a person momentarily forgets a name, phrase, or word.
Example: At a debate/forum Texas Governor Rick Perry could not recall thename of the third of three Federal bureaucracies he hopes to eliminate, or togreatly-reduce and merge into others, when he became President. 

The ACTA Internet Chapter: Putting the Pieces Together -- Internet Agreement

How is this treaty going to affect the Internet and people that give their opinions on blogs is a question that is on the mindd of the Tech Community. What bothers us is this President believes that a Treaty should be the law of the land when it is signed and the Constitution ignored. No Treaty is enforceable until Senate ratification which 2/3rds of the Senators voting for the treaty. This is something that cannot be changed by Obama and the Democrats but it doesn't seem to bother them.

We have included several stories that detail what is happening as chances of seeing it on the broadcast news are slim to none. This could affect us all but the media once again have their heads buried in the sand. Is today's mainstream media (what a misnomer) so entrenched with Obama that he and his Administration can say and do anything and the media will spin?

The ACTA Internet Chapter: Putting the Pieces Together
Tuesday November 03, 2009

The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement negotiations continue in a few hours as Seoul, Korea plays host to the latest round of talks. The governments have posted the meeting agenda, which unsurprisingly focuses on the issue of Internet enforcement [UPDATE 11/4: Post on discussions for day two of ACTA talks, including the criminal enforcement provisions]. The United States has drafted the chapter under enormous secrecy, with selected groups granted access under strict non-disclosure agreements and other countries (including Canada) given physical, watermarked copies designed to guard against leaks.

Despite the efforts to combat leaks, information on the Internet chapter has begun to emerge (just as they did with the other elements of the treaty). Sources say that the draft text, modeled on the U.S.-South Korea free trade agreement, focuses on following five issues:

1. Baseline obligations inspired by Article 41 of the TRIPs which focuses on the enforcement of intellectual property.

2. A requirement to establish third-party liability for copyright infringement.

3. Restrictions on limitations to 3rd party liability (ie. limited safe harbour rules for ISPs). For example, in order for ISPs to qualify for a safe harbour, they would be required establish policies to deter unauthorized storage and transmission of IP infringing content. Provisions are modeled under the U.S.-Korea Free Trade Agreement, namely Article 18.10.30. They include policies to terminate subscribers in appropriate circumstances. Notice-and-takedown, which is not currently the law in Canada nor a requirement under WIPO, would also be an ACTA requirement.

4. Anti-circumvention legislation that establishes a WIPO+ model by adopting both the WIPO Internet Treaties and the language currently found in U.S. free trade agreements that go beyond the WIPO treaty requirements. For example, the U.S.-South Korea free trade agreement specifies the permitted exceptions to anti-circumvention rules. These follow the DMCA model (reverse engineering, computer testing, privacy, etc.) and do not include a fair use/fair dealing exception. Moreover, the free trade agreement clauses also include a requirement to ban the distribution of circumvention devices. The current draft does not include any obligation to ensure interoperability of DRM.

5. Rights Management provisions, also modeled on U.S. free trade treaty language.

If accurate (and these provisions are consistent with the U.S. approach for the past few years in bilateral trade negotiations) the combined effect of these provisions would to be to dramatically reshape Canadian copyright law and to eliminate sovereign choice on domestic copyright policy. Having just concluded a national copyright consultation, these issues were at the heart of thousands of submissions. If Canada agrees to these ACTA terms, flexibility in WIPO implementation (as envisioned by the treaty) would be lost and Canada would be forced to implement a host of new reforms (this is precisely what U.S. lobbyists have said they would like to see happen). In other words, the very notion of a made-in-Canada approach to copyright would be gone.

Excerpt: See Full Article at Michaelgeist.ca

We have more details that have leaked and it is does not look -- what are their real motives with this treaty?

Cory Doctorow

POSTED AT 2:13 PM November 3, 2009

Secret copyright treaty leaks. It's bad. Very bad.

The internet chapter of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, a secret copyright treaty whose text Obama's administration refused to disclose due to "national security" concerns, has leaked. It's bad. It says:

* That ISPs have to proactively police copyright on user-contributed material. This means that it will be impossible to run a service like Flickr or YouTube or Blogger, since hiring enough lawyers to ensure that the mountain of material uploaded every second isn't infringing will exceed any hope of profitability.

* That ISPs have to cut off the Internet access of accused copyright infringers or face liability. This means that your entire family could be denied to the internet -- and hence to civic participation, health information, education, communications, and their means of earning a living -- if one member is accused of copyright infringement, without access to a trial or counsel.

* That the whole world must adopt US-style "notice-and-takedown" rules that require ISPs to remove any material that is accused -- again, without evidence or trial -- of infringing copyright. This has proved a disaster in the US and other countries, where it provides an easy means of censoring material, just by accusing it of infringing copyright.

* Mandatory prohibitions on breaking DRM, even if doing so for a lawful purpose (e.g., to make a work available to disabled people; for archival preservation; because you own the copyrighted work that is locked up with DRM)

Source: http://www.boingboing.net/2009/11/03/secret-copyright-tre.html

Then we have find out negotiations this week will focus on enforcement in the digital environment. What type of enforcement are they talking about? We do not have a good feeling about any thing involving enforcement that this Administration is involved. This is all looking worse and worse.

November 3rd, 2009
Leaked ACTA Internet Provisions: Three Strikes and a Global DMCA
Commentary by Gwen Hinze

Negotiations on the highly controversial Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement start in a few hours in Seoul, South Korea. This week's closed negotiations will focus on "enforcement in the digital environment." Negotiators will be discussing the Internet provisions drafted by the US government. No text has been officially released but as Professor Michael Geist and IDG are reporting, leaks have surfaced. The leaks confirm everything that we feared about the secret ACTA negotiations. The Internet provisions have nothing to do with addressing counterfeit products, but are all about imposing a set of copyright industry demands on the global Internet, including obligations on ISPs to adopt Three Strikes Internet disconnection policies, and a global expansion of DMCA-style TPM laws.

As expected, the Internet provisions will go beyond existing international treaty obligations and follow the language of Article 18.10.30 of the recent U.S. – South Korea Free Trade Agreement. We see three points of concern.

First, according to the leaks, ACTA member countries will be required to provide for third-party (Internet Intermediary) liability. This is not required by any of the major international IP treaties – not by the 1994 Trade Related Aspects of IP agreement, nor the WIPO Copyright and WIPO Performances and Phonograms Treaty. However, US copyright owners have long sought this. (For instance, see page 19 of the Industry Functional Advisory Committee report on the 2003 US- Singapore Free Trade Agreement noting the need for introducing a system of ISP liability). (Previously available at http://www.ustr.gov/new/fta/Singapore/advisor_reports.htm.)

Second and more importantly, ACTA will include some limitations on Internet Intermediary liability. Many ACTA negotiating countries already have these regimes in place: the US, EU, Australia, Japan, South Korea. To get the benefit of the ACTA safe harbors, Internet intermediaries will need to follow notice and takedown regimes, and put in place policies to deter unauthorized storage and transmission of allegedly copyright infringing content.

Excerpt: See Full Article at EFF.Org

Last but not least we have the comments from Lawfont.com out of Australia:

Geist on ACTA

Geist has a new report on ACTA (above), with some discussion of the potential inclusions in an internet text. Nothing that would surprise an Australian, given our experience with the AUSFTA.

I do, strongly, agree with Michael here, when he notes that:

"On the international front, it provides firm confirmation that the treaty is not a counterfeiting trade, but a copyright treaty. These provisions involve copyright policy as no reasonable definition of counterfeiting would include these kinds of provisions."

From an Australian perspective, I suspect that the temptation for negotiators will be to say that since we are already committed to such rules in the AUSFTA, there is ‘no harm’ in signing up to similar ACTA terms. I think that would be a serious mistake. When Australia signed to such terms in AUSFTA, it did so in a trade deal, where there were other ‘benefits’ (however illusory some might have been). And it retains the freedom to step away from the AUSFTA at some future point if the costs outweigh the benefits. Signing up to such terms in an ACTA would be agreeing that these are to be general international standards: removing any remaining flexibility we have and giving a whole new set of people the right to complain if we want to resile.

Source: Lawfont.com

No one knows for sure what this all means but the lack of information and this being done in secret does not bode well for most people on the Internet that disagree with the Obama Administration. We believe they will use anything they can to shut down dissent.

Strike three for White House on Internet information

Washington Examiner Article
09/02/09
David Freddoso

President Obama's White House does not exactly have a stellar record when it comes to personal information and the Internet. In less than one month, the president's new media team has come under fire for asking citizens to report "fishy e-mails" about Obama's health care reform plan and for e-mail messages from David Axelrod that somehow went to people who did not sign up for them.

So when the Executive Office of the President seeks a contractor to archive the usernames and possibly other data from social network users, it is certainly worth asking them why. We did. We have not heard back from the White House yet.

The National Legal and Policy Center's Ken Boehm has written today on EOP's 51-page contract solicitation for a web archiving service. Among other things, the solicitation notes that the White House is already archiving the content of seven social networking sites where it "maintains a presence." The contractor's purpose is to comply with the Presidential Records Act by saving White House postings to Facebook, MySpace, Flickr, Twitter, slideshare, Vimeo and YouTube.
But the solicitation also specifically includes archiving all messages sent to the White House accounts, and comments posted by users on those social networking pages. "Out of an abundance of caution," the document states, "we are treating comments made by non-PRA personnel on sites on which a PRA component has a presence as presidential records, requiring them to be captured or sampled."

The release of some of the data gathered -- to a future presidential library, or for any other purpose -- could run afoul of the Privacy Act. And the White House seems to leave itself a lot of room with respect to possible uses of the social networking data it stores. For example, will critical comments on EOP's wall secretly land Facebook users on a blacklist? Will other users begin receiving unsolicited messages, or even requests to sign up for Facebook applications?

If not for the events of August, it probably wouldn't even be an issue.

COMMENT: What kind of a blacklist is this Administration running? Where is the MSM on this invasion of privacy? Where is Congress? Crickets chirping once again. When Republicans speak out, you usually find it in local papers. Like a blackout on Republican members of Congress by the inside the beltway crowd except for a few. Wonder if this Administration has ever heard of the Privacy Act the way they act or Democrat leaders of Congress?

Questions Raised As To Why Connected Nation Selected In Florida Despite Costing More Than Double

from the doesn't-look-good... dept

We've already discussed how Washington DC darling Connected Nation appears more and more like a telco sponsored boondoggle to control gov't mapping mandates and collect gov't money, without having to give up real data on broadband access. But, for some reason, politicians just seem to love Connected Nation (CN). Last time I was in DC, it was all anyone was talking about concerning broadband policy. However, there are more and more questions being raised now. Apparently, Connected Nation got a big win in Florida recently, despite the fact that its bid for mapping was more than double the next runner up, ISC. Connect Florida -- a brand new "affiliate" of Connected Nation, bid $7.1 million. ISC, which is actually based in Florida and has worked with Florida gov't agencies in the past, bid $2.8 million. ISC used references for its actual work on the ground in Florida, including "the Florida Department of Health, the Florida Department of Transportation, the Florida Department of Agriculture and two local businesses, including an Economic Development Council. The ISC application also listed 11 contracts the company has with Florida state agencies." Connect Florida, on the other hand, named out-of-state references who were involved in other Connected Nation projects, raising questions about Connect Florida's understanding of the Florida market. So how did Connect Florida win?

According to sources, one of the five judges gave ISC the win, with an eight-point differential over CN. Two other judges gave CN a two-point win. One other judge gave CN a 15-point win over ISC. Yet in another curiosity, one judge gave CN a 51-point win. That judge was Bill Price, currently the broadband stimulus program manager for the state of Florida, a position he has held for the past three months. According to his profile on the Linked-In social networking site, Price was vice president for business development for BellSouth Business.

Remember how Connected Nation is really closely connected to the telcos? And a former telco exec who only recently got the state gov't job suddenly happens to rate it up massively over the second place competitor? Doesn't that at least raise some ethics questions? Perhaps there's more to it, and perhaps there are good reasons why Connect Florida is better than ISC. But it sure does seem like Florida owes the public an explanation of what those good reasons might be.

COMMENT: Why is FL paying over $4M more to a company from DC versus a company from FL that understands Florida and the needs of its citizens. Why send an extra $4M out of state. Gov Crist -- are you listening?

Bill would give president emergency control of Internet

by Declan McCullagh

Internet companies and civil liberties groups were alarmed this spring when a U.S. Senate bill proposed handing the White House the power to disconnect private-sector computers from the Internet.

They're not much happier about a revised version that aides to Sen. Jay Rockefeller, a West Virginia Democrat, have spent months drafting behind closed doors. CNET News has obtained a copy of the 55-page draft of S.773 (excerpt), which still appears to permit the president to seize temporary control of private-sector networks during a so-called cybersecurity emergency.

The new version would allow the president to "declare a cybersecurity emergency" relating to "non-governmental" computer networks and do what's necessary to respond to the threat. Other sections of the proposal include a federal certification program for "cybersecurity professionals," and a requirement that certain computer systems and networks in the private sector be managed by people who have been awarded that license.

"I think the redraft, while improved, remains troubling due to its vagueness," said Larry Clinton, president of the Internet Security Alliance, which counts representatives of Verizon, Verisign, Nortel, and Carnegie Mellon University on its board. "It is unclear what authority Sen. Rockefeller thinks is necessary over the private sector. Unless this is clarified, we cannot properly analyze, let alone support the bill."

EXCERPT: Click for Full Article

NOTE: This should be frightening to all Americans to put this kind of power in the President's hand especially when this President has so little experience and is taking this Nation toward Socialism. Why are the Democrats in such a rush to take control away from the American citizens? Makes no sense unless they want a socialist country which is not going to happen as long as we have Middle America where we understand what Freedom is all about. Inside the beltway major media types don't seem to have a clue about this Administration and how they are going way left since they are left themselves and have let their own feelings substitute for investigative journalism.