As pointed out by TechDirt, Govtrack.us shows that, despite the incredible backlash both bills received, those that want to regulate the Internet with an ironclad fist have kept the bills on life support. Perhaps they are waiting for Americans to move to another trending topic before SOPA and PIPA “miraculously” return. Whatever the case, the opposition to a free and open Internet still exists, and with sufficient numbers, too.

The remaining SOPA supporters, courtesy of Govtrack:

Mark Amodei [R-NV2]
Joe Baca [D-CA43]
John Barrow [D-GA12]
Karen Bass [D-CA33]
Howard Berman [D-CA28]
Marsha Blackburn [R-TN7]
Mary Bono Mack [R-CA45]
Steven Chabot [R-OH1]
Judy Chu [D-CA32]
John Conyers [D-MI14]
Jim Cooper [D-TN5]
Ted Deutch [D-FL19]
Elton Gallegly [R-CA24]
Robert Goodlatte [R-VA6]
Peter King [R-NY3]
John Larson [D-CT1]
Thomas Marino [R-PA10]
Alan Nunnelee [R-MS1]
William Owens [D-NY23]
Adam Schiff [D-CA29]
Brad Sherman [D-CA27]
Debbie Wasserman Schultz [D-FL20]
Melvin Watt [D-NC12]

Support for PIPA, the Senate version of SOPA, still has a heartbeat as well:

Lamar Alexander [R-TN]
Jeff Bingaman [D-NM]
Richard Blumenthal [D-CT]
Barbara Boxer [D-CA]
Sherrod Brown [D-OH]
Benjamin Cardin [D-MD]
Robert Casey [D-PA]
Thad Cochran [R-MS]
Chris Coons [D-DE]
Bob Corker [R-TN]
Richard Durbin [D-IL]
Michael Enzi [R-WY]
Dianne Feinstein [D-CA]
Al Franken [D-MN]
Kirsten Gillibrand [D-NY]
Lindsey Graham [R-SC]
Charles Grassley [R-IA]
Kay Hagan [D-NC]
John Isakson [R-GA]
Tim Johnson [D-SD]
Amy Klobuchar [D-MN]
Herbert Kohl [D-WI]
Mary Landrieu [D-LA]
Joseph Lieberman [I-CT]
John McCain [R-AZ]
Robert Menéndez [D-NJ]
Bill Nelson [D-FL]
Charles Schumer [D-NY]
Jeanne Shaheen [D-NH]
Tom Udall [D-NM]
Sheldon Whitehouse [D-RI]

Perhaps the most unfortunate discovery is seeing Al Franken’s name on the PIPA supporters list. Considering his personal crusade concerning location privacy in relation to mobile phones and their carriers, the fact that he supports such potentially destructive legislation is disappointing; but then again, Franken did get his start in show business, so perhaps he’s just supporting the industry that made him famous.

Whatever happens to these pieces of legislation, it’s clear it’s going to take more than an Internet blackout to hold the attention of those officials who believe a regulated Internet is the only way to protect the future of the entertainment industry.

Brazilian officials charge that Twitter users who warn citizens of the government’s attempts at traffic enforcement violate the law and endanger the public by making it harder for police to do their jobs. The government asks that the Twitter accounts of users who violate the injunction be suspended and their tweets blocked.

It is not yet clear whether Twitter intends to cooperate with the Brazilian government in suspending user accounts and blocking tweets. This seems like the sort of situation for which Twitter’s recently announced censorship program was tailor-made. Depending on Twitter’s response to Brazilian officials, it looks as though the program may be about to get it’s first real-world test.

According to India’s NDTV, Google and Facebook have already issued compliance reports in response to the court’s demands. While Google said that they have already begun removing some objectionable content from certain sites, Facebook, Yahoo, and Microsoft insisted that there are no grounds for complaint against them or their content.

This court order comes as part of a civil case brought by Muslim leader Mufti Aijaz Arshad Quasmi, who is seeking the removal of content that is morally or religiously objectionable. The current case is part of an ongoing struggle by the government of India to get such content off of search and social networking sites. In December acting telecommunications minister Kapil Sibal met with representatives of several companies and asked them to voluntarily screen certain kinds of content from their sites and search results. Google and Facebook issued statements saying that they would remove content that violated their terms of service, and would comply with Indian law, but would not actively censor content merely for being “objectionable.” In response to the controversy, Sibal gave an interview in which he denied that his office had asked anyone to pre-screen user content and that political satire was the target of his office’s requests. He insisted that only offensive or inappropriate content should be removed.

Last month the Indian government initiated legal proceedings against Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Yahoo, and others over their refusal to remove offensive content. Google and Facebook requested that the proceedings be dropped. The court refused and warned them that India was just as capable of blocking such sites as China.

According to Google’s Transparency Report, they received 68 requests from the government of India to take down content from Google’s services, including search, YouTube, Blogger, Picasa, and Orkut. Orkut and YouTube were the subject of the vast majority of the requests. There were 25 requests to take down material on Orkut, and 19 to remove material on YouTube. The 19 YouTube requests covered 48 total items. Of those 48 videos, over a third – 19 – list “government criticism” as the reason for the takedown request. Privacy and security concerns ran a distant second, with four requests covering eight videos. Government criticism was also behind the vast majority of Orkut content removal. One takedown request covered 236 individual items on Orkut that India wanted removed.

In contrast, issues like defamation, privacy and security, and pornography were the subject of far fewer takedown requests. Only three YouTube items were requested to be removed on the grounds of pornography, only six for defamation, and eight for privacy and security. On Orkut only six items were taken down for defamation, and six for privacy and security. Only Blogger saw a majority of content taken down for defamation, with 24 of 39 items removed for that reason.

It is difficult to know what the government of India found objectionable about this particular content without seeing it. At the same time, it is difficult to square the fact that “government criticism” was the subject of so many takedown requests with Kapil Sibal’s insistence in the above-referenced interview that he would welcome government-related satire as a means of free expression.

Requests for comment were sent to both Facebook and Google. While Facebook has yet to respond, a Google spokesperson issued the following statement: “This step is in accordance with Google’s longstanding policy of responding to court orders.” She went on to say that there is nothing new to Google’s approach in this matter, and pointed out a 2007 blog post in which Google detailed their policy for dealing with controversial content.

Ars Technica is reporting that negotiators were to meet in Hollywood this week to discuss the new IP chapter in TPP.

As with every secret process, the people get wind of it and want to be a part of it. Civil society and digital rights groups petitioned to be part of the process and have thus far been barred from any interaction with the proceedings.

Sean Flynn, an American University professor and director of the Information Justice Program, said that public interest advocacy organizations found that negotiations for an IP chapter of TPP would be held at a hotel in West Hollywood.

Flynn, among others, helped to organize a “public interest briefing” that would take place at the same hotel that the TPP negotiations were being held. They sent out invitations to all the delegates that would be at the negotiations including the U.S. Trade Representative. An hour after the invite was sent, the hotel sent a message canceling their meeting:

“I am sorry to be the bearer of bad news but unfortunately we will not be able to move forward with your luncheon for Tuesday January 31st. It was brought to my attention that we have a confidential group in house and we will not be allowing any other groups in the meeting space that day. Again, my apologies for the late notice. Hopefully we can work together in the near future.”

After getting wind of this, a group called the hotel to book another private event that was not associated with the TPP. The hotel was more than happy to oblige. It would seem that only TPP-related events were not allowed at the hotel at the “request of an unidentified party.”

That didn’t stop them from holding a meeting on TPP, however, with the group moving the luncheon to a restaurant across the street. There was also a two-hour conference on TPP held at the USC Law School. You can watch the entirety of the conference here.

At the same time, there were protests being held on the street outside the hotel with people holding signs saying, “Secret meeting here” and “TPP Trading for the one percent.” Anonymous uploaded some pictures from the event to imgur.

Fortunately for us, parts of the TPP IP chapter were leaked online. You can bet that the provisions set into place last year have changed by now. We don’t know what kind of changes and most likely wont until another leak or when it goes into law.

The USTR Web site details very little about TPP while claiming to offer a lot of knowledge on the treaty. What we get is a broad explanation of the provisions of the bill. This is what the USTR Web site has to say on the IP provisions in the treaty:

TPP countries have agreed to reinforce and develop existing World Trade Organization Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property (TRIPS) rights and obligations to ensure an effective and balanced approach to intellectual property rights among the TPP countries. Proposals are under discussion on many forms of intellectual property, including trademarks, geographical indications, copyright and related rights, patents, trade secrets, data required for the approval of certain regulated products, as well as intellectual property enforcement and genetic resources and traditional knowledge. TPP countries have agreed to reflect in the text a shared commitment to the Doha Declaration on TRIPS and Public Health.

The US International Trade Commission issued a report on TPP last year that detailed the “expected controversies” regarding the IP rights chapter in the treaty. It expects it to be “highly controversial” with pharmaceuticals and information technology being affected the most. They expect resistance from importers, competitive producers, national health systems and NGOs.

Flynn argues that the IP provisions in the TPP are controversial by far exceeding what is currently in U.S. law. They claim that TPP even extends copyright protections to buffer copies, which are copies of a work that a computer makes before it is played.

For what it’s worth, the public can send a question or comment about TPP to the USTR through this Web form. Ars Technica claims that the negotiators do take in presentations from civil groups on occasion.

This is just one more secret treaty being pushed through secretly without any input from the public. With ACTA protests still going strong, it may be time for people to turn their attention towards TPP. It would go a long way if the USTR were to release a draft of the current treaty for the public to peruse. If our governments want us to trust them, they should trust these all too important treaties to public scrutiny.

What do you think? Is the TPP another attack on our Internet rights? Or are people making a big deal out of nothing? Let us know in the comments.

[Lead image courtesy of Free Enterprise]

In the land where parody accounts of celebrities brush shoulders with the insipid accounts of real celebrities literally getting paid to tweet, which is layered on top of millions of actually meaningful accounts, it probably isn’t a surprise to anyone that the United States is home to the most Twitter accounts with nearly 108 million accounts. While fathoming that amount is kind of a headache – seriously, that’s an average of roughly 1 account per 3 people in the United States – it only accounts for 28.1% of all Twitter accounts worldwide. Still, the growth of Twittering Americans doesn’t seem like it’ll slow down anytime since 5.6 million accounts were created in the United States in December 2011 alone.

Brazil and Japan are involved in an interesting contest for 2nd and 3rd place in the Twitterscape. Brazil has actually surpassed Japan in terms of the sheer quantity of user accounts but Japan still exhibits more Twitter activity than Brazil. Between September 2011 and December 2011, the study says, 30% of accounts in Japan posted a message whereas only 25% of accounts in Brazil posted a message. It’s all a matter of which metric you want to weight, but then again, it’s not like there’s a trophy for being #2 Twitter Country (not that there is for 1st place, either). Additionally, Japanese is still the 2nd most used language on Twitter after English.

While the United States might be the girthiest nation when it comes to Twitter accounts, they’re certainly not the most active (you like how that’s a metaphor for a lot of things related to the American lifestyle?). In fact, the distinction of most active Twittering country belongs to the Netherlands. One-third of all accounts located in the Netherlands posted at least one public message between September 1, 2011, and November 30, 2011. Japan and Spain follow in 2nd and 3rd place, respectively, while the U.S. places at 4th in activity. Still, even with the U.S. ranking as the 4th most active country on Twitter, that ranking would surely be lower if not for the sheer heft of accounts existing in the United States.

With so much drama in the Twitter lately, it’s a bit hard to anticipate how these figures will look this time in 2013. By then we’ll have a fuller understanding of how Twitter’s new policy of selectively withholding tweets (if and when they do) has affected users’ activity. Additionally, now that Twitter is expanding languages to be included in their Translation Center, such as Arabic and Farsi, it’ll be curious to see how those changes may affect the landscape of Twitter activity.

Anybody out there got any speculations you wanna bet on? See any changes on the horizon for how different parts of the world might use Twitter? Feel free to share below in the comments.

Google has set up a page specifically addressing the redirects, and in their explanation, it also reveals their plans of country-specific censorship, something the redirection makes much easier:

Migrating to localized domains will allow us to continue promoting free expression and responsible publishing while providing greater flexibility in complying with valid removal requests pursuant to local law. By utilizing ccTLDs, content removals can be managed on a per country basis, which will limit their impact to the smallest number of readers. Content removed due to a specific country’s law will only be removed from the relevant ccTLD. [Emphasis added]

It’s odd to see “free expression” and “valid removal requests” in same sentence, but here we are. Google’s page goes on to promise “the majority of the content hosted on different domains will be unaffected by content removals,” but the fact remains, they are positioning themselves to remove content that much easier.

Another feature appears to be of the circumvention of the country code top-level domains, at least in relation to accessing the content:

Blog readers may request a specific country version of the blogspot content by entering a specially formatted “NCR” URL.

NCR stands for “No Country Redirect” and will always display buzz.blogger.com in English, whether you’re in India, Brazil, Honduras, Germany, or anywhere.

As for the content creators, it seems these blogs will be available via country-specific domains, which again, only helps Google when it comes to content removal requests. The question is, what constitutes a “valid removal request?” Would a blog post be removed if, say, local officials in Iran didn’t appreciate being criticized by an Iranian blogger and ran to Google with a takedown demand? Would Google comply? Or is this only in relation to foreign blogs that infringe on intellectual property?

Torrent Freak is reporting that two large ISPs in the Netherlands, T-Mobile and KPN, are refusing to block access to The Pirate Bay after the Hollywood supported anti-piracy group BREIN demanded they restrict access. The ISPs said that blocking Web sites is a threat to the open Internet.

As you may or may not be aware, the Court of the Hague ruled that Ziggo and XS4ALL, the two largest ISPs in the Netherlands, have to block access to The Pirate Bay.

After the ruling, XS4ALL was quoted as saying they were disappointed that fundamental rights had been traded for “commercial interests.”

BREIN brought the case against those two ISPs, but they weren’t finished yet. They issued requests to other ISPs in the country to block access to the torrent site.

KPN and T-Mobile both made statements saying that they would not be honoring BREIN’s request. Torrent Freak says that this means millions of Internet users in the Netherlands can still access The Pirate Bay without the use of proxies.

They both spoke out against censorship and said that they would only block access following a court order. They told Hollywood that innovation is a better way to deal with piracy than straight out censorship.

KPN said that they don’t believe a blockade is the right solution, but “robust, attractive business models that are easy to use and offer a fair deal to both producers and consumers of content.”

T-Mobile made a similar statement saying that they will only respond to a court ruling, and not the demands from a “private party such as BREIN.”

BREIN is expected to bring the two ISPs to court over their refusal to block access to the site.

It makes you wonder if these anti-piracy groups even get that what they’re doing has no effect. We’ve seen it time and time again. You censor a Web site and users get around it with little to no effort.

You would think that Hollywood would finally learn to innovate and remain competitive instead of just suing everything that remotely threatens their business model from the 20th century.

Thailand was the first country to announce that they would be taking advantage of Twitter’s new policy to police tweets that would be offensive or break the law in their country. The Washington Post is reporting that the country’s technology minister, Anudith Nakornthap, said the new policy was a “constructive” development.

Nakornthap said it was good that Twitter is cooperating with governments to make sure basic rights are not violated through social media.

What basic rights are being protected? Thailand has already blocked over a thousand websites that contain anti-monarchy content since December. We can only assume that they will be doing the same with tweets.

It’s only a matter of time before more countries jump on board the censorship wagon. Good thing Twitter already has a work around to remove that pesky censorship.

As we reported back in December, Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal purchased a stake in Twitter at $300 million. At the time, the purchase was described by Talal as being “a suitable opportunity to invest in promising, high-growth businesses with global impact.”

Talal owns Kingdom Holdings Company. The company owns stakes in Apple, Time Warner, Citigroup, Pepsi, General Motors, Walt Disney and News Corp. Twitter was the first social media giant that Talal saw fit to invest in.

There was already some speculation back in December that the move was an act of self-preservation with one analyst saying that he was using the Twitter investment to prevent any further revolutions in the region.

Twitter users have latched onto the news and are squarely pointing the blame at Talal as the reason behind the recent change in Twitter’s policy.

Did Twitter decide to apply localized censorship due to pressure from Prince Talal? We’ll most likely never know.

Do you think Talal’s investment in Twitter led to their new policy? Or is this all just one big conspiracy theory? Tell us in the comments.

The idea of censoring tweets does raise a few concerns, especially among those who used it in revolutionary protests last year in the Middle East. It’s still being used by different factions within activist and protest groups to spread the word on events and actions taking place.

I know I’m beating a dead horse here, but just take a look at @YourAnonNews. They are tweeting announcements of protests, where to meet up, the time they are taking place, etc. The problem arises if and when a country asks Twitter to remove these tweets to throw protest movements into disarray.

Heck, a major reason the ACTA protests in Europe are being successful is because of Twitter’s influence. Multiple Twitter accounts are coordinating their efforts to create protests today in Warsaw, Poland; Brussels, Belgium and other cities across Europe.

The story we ran today on Polish politicians wearing Guy Fawkes masks was retweeted over and over again giving solidarity and hope to the protesters. Under Twitter’s new censorship guidelines, it could all swept under the rug.

Speaking to WebProNews, Anonymous Sweden said that they can absolutely see European governments blocking access to protestor tweets to stifle the movements against ACTA.

The move comes at a time where Twitter wants to expand internationally and with these new tools may be able to convince China to let them in. The need to selectively censor tweets after seeing this is pretty obvious. It would expand their business and allow them to grow far more rapidly.

One must wonder, however, if Twitter is putting their own interests ahead of the “positive global impact” that they themselves see Twitter having.

The reaction to Twitter’s announcement was pretty strong, but expected. Of course, the Internet took off right away to get #TwitterCensored trending to make a statement to the social media giant that it wouldn’t stand for it.

Most using the hashtag #TwitterCensored are unsurprisingly from Arab nations who used the social networking tool to organize protests last year.

On top of that, Twitter users are also using the hashtag #TwitterBlackout to pledge their support to a campaign centered around not tweeting Saturday, January 28.

Right now, the only tweets being reported are DMCA takedown notices. You can view the reported tweets at Chilling Effects.

In Twitter’s defense, it’s encouraging that they are making this whole process as transparent as they possibly can. They do say, however, that they have no obligation to tell users that a tweet was taken down if they are “legally prohibited from doing so.”

It’s also encouraging that they are moving with the selective country censorship instead of a global take down of offending tweets. This makes the process easier to get around in a loophole as we’ve previously reported on.

At the end of the day, it’s just discouraging to see Twitter enact a policy like this. They claim that their value as a company is to “defend and respect each user’s voice.” If they did respect their voices, there wouldn’t be a policy like this in the first place. There’s a reason why people are upset and it’s aimed squarely at what they perceive as a violation of their freedom of speech.

Twitter obviously doesn’t seem think so. Their blog post makes it seem as if they are only going to censor tweets that are offensive as hate speech or infringe copyright. Even if you don’t agree with it, hate speech is protected under some governments. The Internet, despite numerous attempts by governments to exert their power over it, is still very much a free forum for people to discuss their ideals, even nasty ideals that the majority doesn’t agree with it.

The “marketplace of ideas” is a concept that should be familiar to law students as it was used in Justice Holmes’ dissent in Abrams vs. United States. The idea is that the genuinely good ideas and speech will become favorable while offensive and infringing speech will die.

Twitter would be wise to take that into account with their new policy. Instead of trying to police all the users on their service, let what comes natural take place. Sure, there will be infringing and offensive tweets, but they mostly never trend. If you look at any trending page on most days, you’ll see ideas being shared between users that can enrich their lives and alert them to topics that are important to society as a whole.

Even if Twitter’s censorship amounts to nothing more than censoring offensive images in countries where they are banned, it still sets a disturbing precedent that would give more credence to other services’ efforts to stifle free speech.

Even if Twitter moves ahead with its plans and it turns out to be the worst case scenario, the Internet would still be a place of free expression. As John Gilmore, co-founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said, “The Internet interprets censorship as damage and routes around it.”

Do you see any concern in Twitter censoring tweets by country? Or is this just the concern of worst case scenario theorists? Let us know in the comments.