Anthony De Rosa

Reddit users have taken it upon themselves to draft legislation in place of SOPA and PIPA, unsatisfied with Washington politicians, who seem to have shown a willful ignorance of how the Internet actually works. Using a Google Doc open for anyone to help write and edit, they’ve come up with a draft version of “The Freedom of Internet Act”

The act addresses some basic tenets they’ve set forth. Note that these proclamations are subject to change as this is a living document and only reflect the content at the time of this publication:

• Censorship – No government of any form presiding over any land, people, or assets in any form within the United States of America shall pass any law, nor ratify any treaty, which imposes or administers any kind of censorship on the Internet, except content found to be illegal content in accordance with this act.
• Culpability – Only the creator or uploader of data is responsible for whether that data is legal to upload, possess or make available to other users or information services.
• Restrictions on the Internet - No federal union or sovereign state may pass unilateral restrictions on the Internet.
• Content removal - Notice must be given to an administrator of the information system and to the uploader of the content within at least 30 days in advance of any deletion of data from any information system or service, or within 24 hours of the transfer of the data in question from publicly accessible storage to privately accessible storage.
• Judicial proceedings - Anyone undergoing judicial proceedings based on this document must be judged in the courts of the nation where the alleged offence was committed.
• Appropriate punishment - TBD
• Rights of the user – Addresses right to anonymity, privacy, use of proxies, encryption without fear of discrimination or suspicion.
• Liability and Settlement of Copyright Infringement Claim - All calculations related to this are to be carried out in a consumer, retail, individual level pricing upon which the production cost, marketing cost will not influence, capped at 200% of calculated damage.

The sub-Reddit page for FIA is located here, where it was created by a user named “RoyalwithCheese22”

The act aims to protect transformative works derived from copyrighted materials, such as mash-ups, memes and many other types of content shared on sites like Reddit, YouTube, Tumblr, Facebook and Twitter. It also seeks to try to address issues at an international level not just domestically in the United States.

1) If an individual resided in more than one country when committing violation(s) of this document, they shall be judged based on their physical location at the time of the offence.

2) The individual in question may demand extradition to their country of residence or citizenship, where they must then be tried for the listed offences. The court proceeding shall judge the crime as if the offence had been committed in his country of residence or citizenship during the event of the crime.

3) No person is to be extradited, deported or forced to leave, nor forcibly taken from a country for the need of legal proceedings. Any legal proceeding must be conducted in the country of which the crime was committed.

For more on the act and an interview with the original creator of the document, read this post by Dean Praetorious at the Huffington Post.

A social media first occurred this evening when President Barack Obama held a Google+ Hangout to take live questions from five Americans and a few people who were taped beforehand, including a homeless veteran and an Occupy protester.

He answered questions about the economy, job creation, small business, and the use of drones in Iraq and Afghanistan. Obama referenced a New York Times story on the use of drones, which he called “overwritten,” and said that the use of drones had not resulted in an unusual number of civilian casualties. Asked about the anti-piracy legislation that set the Internet on fire, Obama said, ”When SOPA came up on the hill, we expressed some concerns about the way the legislation had been written.”

Almost as fascinating as the Hangout itself was the discussion of the Hangout on Twitter.

Many wondered who chose which questions were posed to the president from the more than 130,000 submissions. Alex Howard, who covers “open government” for O’Reilly Media, said Steve Grove, head of community partnerships at Google+, picked the questions.

Was it a campaign stunt, an ad for Google, a great opportunity for citizens to connect with the president, or all of the above?

The videoconference lasted thirty minutes and ended with a request for the president to show off some dance moves. He declined, but suggested he might use a future opportunity to sing. “In some future Google+, I may sing another tune,” he said.

I hear he does a great Al Green.

Update: CNN’s Security Blog points out that during the Hangout, Obama casually admitted to drone strikes in Pakistan

“a lot of these strikes have been in the FATA, and going after al Qaeda suspects who are up in very tough terrain on the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan. For us to be able to get them in another way would involve probably a lot more intrusive military actions than the one we’re already engaging in.” (FATA being the Federally Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan where Al Qaeda and many Taliban are ensconced).

Obama also made another bit of news by addressing a question regarding a young UK man named Richard O’Dwyer who the US is trying to have extradited for copyright infringement. He runs a website called “TV Shack” that offers streaming video of movies and television programs. Obama was asked “Why are you personally supporting the extradition of UK citizen Richard O’Dwyer for solely linking to copyright infringing works using an extradition treaty designed to combat terrorism and bring terrorists to judgement in the USA?” to which he responded that he was “not personally doing anything” because the president does not get directly involved in those type of decisions.

“One of the ways our system works is the president doesn’t get involved in prosecution decisions and extradition decisions and this has been a decision by the justice department,” he said.

“Broadly, we want to make sure intellectual property is protected we want to make sure that the creative works of people in this country aren’t expropriated, but we want to do it in a way that is consistent with internet freedom.”

The Huffington Post has more on this particular story.

Watch the Hangout, via the White House, starting at the 1:02 mark:

Credit: YouTube/WhiteHouse

BuzzFeed has been getting a lot of attention lately, for their high profile hire of well respected political reporter Ben Smith, from Politico and for a recent influx of $15.5 million in new investment. I headed to BuzzFeed headquarters downtown here in Soho to find out what they’re planning to do with the money and how they’re going to differentiate themselves from sites like the Huffington Post.

Interview with founder and CEO Jonah Peretti and politics editor-in-chief Ben Smith

Interview with political reporter and video researching wunderkind Andrew Kaczynski