The FBI is looking to develop a web application that can monitor social networks, including Facebook and Twitter, in order to gain better real-time intelligence about current or potential future security threats or situations.

This plan was inadvertently revealed by the FBI’s Strategic Information and Operations Center (SOIC) in a market research request for a “Social Media Application.”

The eagle-eyed New Scientist picked up on the request, which aims to “determine the capabilities of the IT industry to provide a social media application.”

Government agencies like the FBI are usually reluctant to openly discuss how social networks are used as an intelligence tool.

In the Request for Information document, the FBI lays out the requirements for the application that it is seeking to build. In the background portion of the document, the SIOC writes:

The FBI has conducted market research and determined that a geospatial alert and analysis mapping application is the best known solution for attaining and disseminating real time open source intelligence and improving the FBI’s overall situational awareness.

We’ve embedded the six-page document below, but here are some of the highlights:

• Provide an automated search and scrape capability of both social networking sites and open source news sites for breaking events, crisis, and threats that meet the search parameters/keywords defined by FBI SIOC.
• Ability for user to create, define, and select parameters/key word requirements. Automated search of national news, local news, and social media networks. Examples include but are not limited to Fox News. CNN, MSNBC, Twitter, Facebook, etc.
• Provide instant notifications of breaking events, incidents, and emerging threats that have been vetted and meet the deÔ¨Åned search parameters.
• Ability to immediately access geospatial maps with coding in addition to providing critical infrastructural layers. Preferred maps include but are not limited to Google Maps, Google 3D maps, ESRI, and Yahoo Maps.
• Ability to instantly search and monitor key words and strings in all “publicly available” tweets across the Twitter Site and any other “publicly available” social networking
  sites/forums (i.e. Facebook, MySpace, etc.).

The entire document is worth reading, if only to see the request for a “tweet lingo” dictionary within the app.

Monitoring social media activity isn’t limited to the FBI. Earlier this month, House subcommittee members urged the Department of Homeland Security to more closely monitor social media traffic.

While privacy advocates have bristled at the idea of social media monitoring, the government position is that if information is public, it’s fair game for scraping and monitoring.

The FBI’s RFI specifically targets “publicly available information” — rather than anything users keep private.

What do you think about how government agencies and law enforcement are using social media monitoring tools? Let us know in the comments.

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Social Media Application Request for Information

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Social Media Application

For entertainment studios around the world, Kim Dotcom probably looks a lot like King Henry VIII. To them he is rich, rotund, and chopping their businesses off at the head.

Two of those attributes, at least, are factually true. The third is in legal dispute.

Kim Dotcom, the founder of recently indicted file sharing company Megaupload, was born Kim Schmitz. A German native who legally changed his surname to Dotcom ten years ago, he has a speckled past. This includes accusations of credit card fraud and criminal hacking, as well as a confession of embezzlement. Now Kim lives in a New Zealand mansion allegedly worth $30 million and owns high-end vehicles like a Rolls-Royce, a Maserati, and a Lamborghini.

It’s all legitimately-acquired wealth, according to Megaupload spokesperson Bonnie Lam.

In accordance with German’s “clean-slate” law, Dotcom’s record has been wiped clean of his previous offenses, and he has paid his due after his convictions, Lam said.

“He has matured, learned from his past mistakes and is a successful businessman,” Lam told Cnet. “Kim is one of many shareholders at Mega and not involved in most day-to-day business decisions.”

He is, nevertheless, a colorful character. Dotcom co-produced and appears in a popular promotional video for Megaupload that came out in December, 2011 (that’s him in the screen shot above). The video, which included such popular music stars as Macy Gray, Will.i.am, Kanye West, Kim Kardashian, Serena Williams, Snoop Dogg and a host of others, was targeted by Universal Music Group for unspecified reasons, briefly removed from YouTube, and then reinstated to the popular video-sharing site shortly afterward. Megaupload filed its own suit against Universal immediately after the incident. The video has now been seen almost 12 million times.

Dotcom, who is married and a father of three, was charged this week with five counts of copyright infringement, along with money laundering. He was arrested at his own birthday party on Thursday, along with other employees of Megaupload and its various properties, including Megaporn, Megavideo, Megaclick, and Megarotic. When the police came calling, he barricaded himself inside the mansion’s safe room with what appeared to be a sawed-off shotgun.

Megaupload is the company’s flagship site, founded in 2005. It lets people upload, store and transfer files around the globe, a service that can be used for legitimate purposes (transferring a large data file to a business associate, for instance) but which, the FBI alleges, is also used for distributing copyrighted video and audio. The company’s headquarters are said to be in Hong Kong, though its servers exist in other countries as well. The US FBI took action after discovering servers in Virgina holding unlicensed copyrighted material. Indeed, the US calling this a “Mega Conspiracy.”

The indictment served yesterday listed assets owned by Dotcom and his fellow employees, which tallied to around $175,000,000. Expensive vehicles, artwork, electronics, and a laundry list of bank accounts were named.

On Friday, police in New Zealand raided Dotcom’s home and seized many of these assets, including a Rolls Royce, numerous Mercedes-Benz cars, cash and allegedly guns. Dotcom is known for enjoying his fast cars and attending the Gumball 3000, an automobile “rally” that has drawn celebrities such as Snoop Dogg, Johnny Knoxville and others.

In response, the loose hacker collective known as Anonymous retaliated by taking down the Department of Justice and FBI websites with a denial-of-service attack.

Dotcom has been in trouble with the law for money before. In 2001, the Megaupload founder pocketed 1.5 million euros after promising to invest 50 million euros into failing company LetsBuyIt.com. He pulled the fraud off by purchasing 375,000 euros worth of stock in the company, made his investment announcement, and watched the stock price soar. After the stock had climbed a considerable amount, Dotcom cut and ran, having never possessed enough money to make the 50 million euro investment in the first place. In 2003, Dotcom admitted to embezzlement and was flown from Thailand to Germany for the trial.

According to New Zealand-based website 3 News, New Zealand’s government initially denied Dotcom’s application residency when he failed a “good character” test. However, he then donated to the Christchurch Earthquake Fund and invested $10 million in government bonds, and his application was subsequently approved.

Now Dotcom is facing even more financial charges. He and his alleged co-conspirators are accused of paying third parties to upload copyrighted material.

Dotcom remains positive, however. When faced with three of his coworkers before the press in a New Zealand court room, he invited pictures and video. When a lawyer asked the press to stop, Kim Dotcom interjected with, “We have nothing to hide.”

 

The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Protect IP Act (PIPA) are two bills that sound like they have a mildly positive aim but, in reality, have serious potential to negatively change the internet as we know it. While the Obama administration has come out against SOPA, effectively shelving it indefinitely, the very similar PIPA bill is still alive and well. Both SOPA and PIPA put power in the hands of the entertainment industry to censor sites that allegedly "engage in, enable or facilitate" copyright infringement. This language is vague enough to target sites you use every day, like Facebook and Google, making these bills a serious problem. Here's what you need to know about the bills and what you can do about them.

What Are SOPA and PIPA All ABout, and Why Should I Care?

The idea behind these bills sounds reasonable. They came about in order to try and snuff out piracy online, as the entertainment industry is obviously not excited that many people are downloading their products without payment or permission. The issue is, however, that it doesn't really matter whether you're in support of piracy, against it, or just don't care. The methods are ineffective. Here's what they are and why they're problematic.

SOPA and PIPA were initially designed to do two things. The first was to make it possible for companies to block the domain names of web sites that are simply capable of, or seem to encourage copyright infringement. This would have been bad for everyone because such a measure doesn't actually prevent piracy. The reason that blocking a domain name isn't effective is because any blocked site can still be accessed via its numeric IP address. For example, if lifehacker.com were blocked, you could still find it by visiting a number-based address. In fact, before the bills were even supposed to come to a vote, tools were created to automatically route domain names to their IP addresses to completely render this measure of SOPA and PIPA useless. As a result, the IP-blocking provisions have been removed from both bills.

 

The other, still-active measure present in the SOPA and PIPA bills would allow rights holders to cut of the source of funding of any potentially infringing web site. This means any other companies doing business with this site would have to stop. Whether that means advertising, links in search engines, or any other listings would have to be removed.

There is, however, an important difference between SOPA and PIPA. SOPA targeted any site that contributed to copyright infringement, even if it was simply facilitating the act by providing a tool that could be used for illegal purposes (regardless of intention). PIPA, on the other hand, requires the targeted site to have no significant use beyond copyright infringement. Basically, PIPA can only be used to censor a site if it's more likely to be a source of illegal content than not. This is still problematic because a tool designed to accept user-generated content is, to some extent, at the whims of its users. If infringing content is found, rights holders already have the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA) to help them request the legal removal of that content. They also have the ability to sue infringers for damages, as we've previously seen with the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) when they, for example, sued a 12-year-old for downloading music. SOPA and PIPA provide a means to censor the tool that provided a means for the infringing content to exist on the internet rather than the content itself. This puts a lot of power in the hands of rights holders and has significant potential for abuse.

This is, of course, our interpretation of these bills. Because we love the internet and oppose censorship, we have an obvious bias. While we believe the right thing to do is to oppose these bills, you should make an informed decision on your own. For more information, please read the exact content of both the SOPA and PIPA bills.

What Can I Do About SOPA and PIPA?

Currently Twitter, Google, Reddit, Kickstarter, Tumblr, Mozilla, Yahoo, AOL, eBay, Zynga, Facebook, and several other sites have spoken out in opposition of SOPA and PIPA. In fact, many sites are censoring their logos (e.g. Google) or completely taking down their sites (e.g. Wikipedia) in protest on January 18th, 2012. There is incredible opposition to these bills because they don't just affect users like you, or small startups, but even very large companies with a large stake in the great things the internet and modern technology have to offer. If you'd like to join in your protest, there are a few things you can do.

 

First, call your congressperson on the phone. This is especially important if you live in a state with SOPA and/or PIPA supports or sponsors. Nonetheless, if your congresspeople do not support these bills you should still contact them to voice your support for their position.

Second, get the word out. Post this article, the American Censorship Day web site, or any other information about SOPA/PIPA on your social media accounts. Send emails to friends and family. If you oppose the bill, help others to understand why you believe they should oppose and encourage them to read more so they can make an informed choice.

 

Let's End the Fight and Start a Discussion

Finally, if you know a supporter or person in favor of SOPA and/or PIPA, have an open discussion. Myself and many others believe that the root of this problem stems from a lack of communication on both sides. Despite what my articles may suggest, I'm not a supporter of piracy. I do believe there is a compromise that both sides can reach with enough discussion, education, and understanding. It's important to remember that both the supporters and opposers of SOPA and PIPA have legitimate concerns. This should not be a fight but rather a cooperative discussion to find a solution. Whichever side you're on, please encourage a conversation that will move us towards change that is good for everyone rather than extreme measures that won't help anyone.

 

 

 

Comedian Louis C.K. recently self-released a video of his stand-up special, “Live at the Beacon Theater,” for $5 online. He personally paid for the production costs up front in an experiment to see if this was a cheaper, more efficient, and less restrictive method of getting his content to his fans. In doing so, he cut out paying the middlemen — including the marketing team — and avoided the red tape of working with studio executives.

In twelve days, Louis C.K. earned more than $1 million from people downloading the special — far more than the $170,000 it cost to produce the video. Louis C.K. gave his thoughts in a post on his site:

“I would have been paid [less than $200,000] by a large company to simply perform the show and let them sell it to you, but they would have charged you about $20 for the video … This way, you only paid $5, you can use the video any way you want.”

Coming from the online marketing world of The Search Agency, I was particularly interested in how he was able to reap a significant ROI without using any of the traditional or online marketing efforts usually made on behalf of comedians and entertainers. Google “Jerry Seinfeld” or “Jay Leno” and you’ll see the paid AdWords links.

Instead, Louis C.K. announced the release of the special on his website and followed up with a personal plea from his Twitter account: “Please don’t torrent this video. I paid for the whole thing with my own stupid money.” He also participated in a Reddit Q&A session with his fans and he discussed his video on “Fresh Air” on NPR. He didn’t appear on Letterman or Leno, he didn’t do an interview with the New York Times. He didn’t do any of the more traditional publicity executed by the PR and marketing teams in the lead-up to a big media product release.

He let his fans do all of the PR.

An alternative comedian, Louis C.K. does not have a PR team or community manager to manage social media assets. He claims to have little knowledge of social media. He told Conan O’Brien that he “hates Twitter.”  There is no official Louis C.K. Facebook page, and he personally manages and occasionally engages his 897,707 Twitter followers. At the end of the day, Louis C.K. followed the most basic best practices of social media and promotions outreach and reaped all the benefits of a best-case scenario.

Let me reiterate something — Louis C.K. is not terribly famous.  He doesn’t have a built-in fan base that will buy anything he tweets.  He has been a successful writer behind the scenes, but has not had enough onscreen time to earn mainstream fame.  His TV show “Louie” on FX was very quietly nominated for two Emmys in 2011, but the show’s highest viewership in history was recorded at 1.57 million viewers.  This is just a fraction of reigning comedy The Big Bang Theory’s lowest rating of 7.34 million viewers. Even reruns of The Big Bang Theory on cable syndication regularly defeat Louie — just last week 4.3 million viewers turned in to TBS to watch a rerun.

Without the luxury of stardom, Louis C.K. sold $1 million of video downloads by trusting his audience. He showed this by selling DRM-free videos, then gently asking them to purchase, not pirate. This openness built a relationship of mutual trust and respect with his fans.  Companies looking to create successful online marketing campaigns should try to build similarly long-term relationships with customers based on trust and direct communication.

All this success happened in the middle of the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) bill controversy. Louis C.K. promoted his own video and demonstrated innovative entrepreneurship without losing significant revenue to Internet piracy. And he did this without any legislative digital protection, proving that making original content available, convenient, and reasonably priced can be enough to quell illegal downloads. Louis C.K. said on his website that “if anybody stole it, it wasn’t many of you. Pretty much everybody bought it.” Perhaps the burden should fall on companies to create products that appeal to willing buyers instead of asking legislators for protection.

Here is my list of lessons from the success of Louis C.K.’s self-released video:

1. Build relationships with customers using an approach that is engaging, personal, and honest.
2. Work toward long-term relationships with your customers so that they will trust your brand as long as you deliver high quality content and products.
3. Create a reasonable price. When the price point is attainable, both fans and people on the fence are willing to pay for the product rather than hunt for a pirated version.
4. Read up on the Stop Online Piracy Act. Stay informed when the bill returns to the House of Representatives this year. Check out Sergey Brin’s Google+ post and I Work for the Internet.

The thing is — Louis C.K.’s online marketing campaign wasn’t really a campaign. It was a public agreement that he made with his audience. He promised to create and release an honest product, and the audience promised to continue supporting his future projects. The consumers didn’t just buy a DRM-free download of Louis C.K.’s standup special — they bought into a trusted relationship with the comedian.

In recent weeks we discovered BitTorrent pirates at the RIAA, Sony, Fox, Universal and even law-abiding organizations such as the Department of Homeland Security. By now it should be clear that people are using BitTorrent pretty much everywhere, and not only for lawful downloads. Today we can add the U.S. House of Representatives to that list, the place where lawmakers are drafting the much discussed “Stop Online Piracy Act” (SOPA).

YouHaveDownloaded is a treasure trove full of incriminating data on alleged BitTorrent pirates in organizations all across the world.

Unauthorized downloads occur even in the most unexpected of places, from the palace of the French President, via the Church of God, to the RIAA.

Although we don’t plan to go on forever trawling the archives, we felt that there was at least one place that warranted further investigation – the U.S. House of Representatives. Since it’s the birthplace of the pending SOPA bill, we wondered how many of the employees there have engaged in unauthorized copying.

The answer is yet again unambiguous – they pirate a lot.

In total we found more than 800 IP-addresses assigned to the U.S. House of Representatives from where content has been shared on BitTorrent. After a closer inspection it quickly became clear the House isn’t just using it for legitimate downloads either, quite the opposite.

Below we’ll list a few of the 800 hits we found on YouHaveDownloaded, which in turn represent just a fraction of total downloads since the site only tracks a limited percentage of total BitTorrent traffic. Again, this is real and confirmed data that is just as good as the evidence used by the RIAA when they sued tens of thousands of people for file-sharing.

Something that immediately caught our eye are the self-help books that are downloaded in the House. “Crucial Conversations- Tools for Talking When Stakes Are High,” for example, may indeed be of interest to the political elite in the United States. And “How to Answer Hard Interview Questions And Everything Else You Need to Know to Get the Job You Want” may be helpful for those who aspire to higher positions.

Books tend to be popular in the House because we found quite a few more, including “Do Not Open – An Encyclopedia of the World’s Best-Kept Secrets” and “How Things Work Encyclopedia”. But of course the people at the heart of democracy are also downloading familiar content such as Windows 7, popular TV-shows and movies.

And there was another category we ran into more than we would have wanted too. It appears that aside from self-help books, House employees are also into adult themed self-help videos. We’ll list one of the least explicit here below, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

Although the above is interesting, as the House is the place where lawmakers are currently trying to push though SOPA, this revelation might actually help their cause. If even people at the House are “stealing” content, we really need SOPA to counter it, they may say.

The question is though, whether SOPA will be able to break the habits of millions of Americans, as there will always be alternatives available. And even if it manages to put a dent in the current piracy rates, is that really worth it considering the potential damage SOPA can do to the open Internet and legal businesses?

 

 

Facebook has rolled out its new Timeline feature to the masses.

This ultra-illustrative, chronological listing of posts, photos, shared links, check-ins, and more is a radically different arrangement than the Facebook profile you've been used to.

And now that your life can be exposed for everyone to see -- and scrutinize -- you may be interested in curating the new interface. Once you've activated Facebook Timeline (go here to do so), you've got seven days to tweak it to make sure it's just how you like before it goes live for everyone to see.

Below are five quick tips on how to personalize, privatize, and generally get the most out of Facebook's newest feature. It doesn't take long to master the new interface, and it's an important exercise for anyone interested in, well, reputation management.

1. Privacy 101: How to hide things

You probably already know that Facebook has controversial positions on privacy. So you may now find that some things included on your Timeline are best kept from curious eyes. This could be anything from an embarrassing status message you posted in simpler social media times, to a rant your ex left on your wall a few months ago.

To hide a Timeline element, click the pencil icon at the top of the offending post, then choose "Hide from Timeline." Easy.

And please note: Any privacy settings you've already set still apply to the Timeline interface. So the photos of you getting wild at last weekend's kegger are still safe from Mom.

If you prefer to keep your profile public, but don't want everyone to see what you posted back in high school, for example, you can also tweak your Timeline settings more generally. Click the arrow next to your Home button at the top of the screen to access your Privacy Settings. Scroll down to "Limit the Audience for Past Posts," then choose "Manage Past Post Visibility." Now click "Limit Old Posts" -- all

2. Tell your life story: How to add past events

Privacy, schmivacy! Perhaps, you want the whole world to know the day you were born, the first time you rode a bike, and that debate club award you got in high school. These events aren't listed on your Timeline, but they can be.

To add a status update, photo, place check-in, or life event to your Timeline, simply hover the mouse over the line in the center of the page until it turns into a plus sign, and reveals the option to add one of those four types of posts.

Now, Facebook can accurately reflect your entire life -- and not just the events that occurred after you first signed on.

3. Add some individuality: How to customize your Timeline

There are a number of ways you can personalize your Timeline so it highlights the posts, pictures and events you cherish most.

First, you can add a cover to your Timeline. Toward the top of your profile, above the buttons where it says "Update Info," you should see "Add a Cover." Once you click that, you can select an image from your photos, or opt to upload a new image. Once it loads, you can adjust the positioning of your cover image.

If you set a cover photo and then decide it's not as great as you first thought, just hover your mouse over the image, and a "Change Cover" option menu will pop up, letting you reposition the image or select a new one.

For photo albums you've created, you can change the primary photo that displays (you could do this before, but now the process is different). Simply click the pencil icon in the upper corner of the album post, and select "Change Primary Photo."

You can also choose to highlight a post -- expanding it from a small, half-page-size post to a wide-screen version — by selecting the star icon in the post's upper-right corner. Conversely, you can click the star on a maximized featured post to make it normal again.

4. Appearances matter: How to check out your Timeline from different angles

If you decide to make a number of posts and photos private or hidden from your Timeline, you can still get the full, complete view of your Facebook action history.

On your Timeline, click "Activity Log." There you'll find posts and information you need to review before it publishes to your profile, as well as a complete look at your interactions on Facebook. This is log completely private to you.

You can choose to filter what you see by clicking the "All" dropdown menu at the top. You can choose to see only your posts, posts by others, posts from specific Facebook apps ("Hmm, let's look at my past Farmville accomplishments"), photos and more.

Like before, you can also check how others view your profile. Next to "Activity Log" is a cog icon. Click that, and you can choose "View As..." and either enter a friend's name or click the "public" link to see how your profile looks to strangers.

5. Information overload: How to organize friends and filter updates

Now that your Timeline is all straightened out, you might as well do some house cleaning on what shows up in your Newsfeed.

When you add a friend or follow someone's public updates, Facebook automatically sets the level of posts you see to "Most Updates." You can change this by going to that profile, and clicking the "Subscribed" button. You can change it to "Only Important" updates or "All updates," and you can also filter what types of posts you're interested in seeing: things like life events, status updates, or photos.

And if you haven't done so already, you can organize friends into lists, a la the Google+ Circles feature. Facebook Lists rolled out in September.

Just go to the left-hand side of your Newsfeed page, click "More," and toward the bottom you'll see "Lists." You can add friends individually to lists like Close Friends, Family, or Co-workers. You can click "More" next to Lists to add other lists of your choosing — "Acquaintances," "Poker Club Members," you get the picture.

The average Facebook user has 130 friends, but I'd venture to say that most of you reading this have far more than that, so this will help streamline your Facebooking experience.

One last thing: If you're one of those people who's still into "poking" your friends, you can still do that. Go to your friend's profile, and the Poke option is listed under a gear cog dropdown menu next to "Message."

 

The same RIAA that makes examples out of ordinary folks by suing them for millions of dollars for file sharing? Turns out someone there's been pirating full seasons of Dexter. Nine million dollars worth. Whoops!

That number—$150,000 for each of the 60 episodes illegally downloaded on the RIAA HQ ISP (OK?)—comes compliments of YouHaveDownloaded which logged the BitTorrent activity of some 50 million users and revealed that not only are the major movie studios pirating their own movies, but the RIAA is downloading pirated TV shows. Lots of 'em.

Again, this is the same RIAA that has been shaking down a Minnesota mother of four for $1.5 million over 24 songs she shared on Kazaa. And it turns out, they're being generous in that case! Since the statutory damages cited by its own guidelines are much higher:

… copyright holders can sue you for up to $150,000 in statutory damages for each of their copyrighted works that you illegally copy or distribute.

So let's see, $150k per episode times 60 episodes comes out to roughly... $9,000,000, checks payable to CBS.

Look, the RIAA's method of "enforcing" copyright law by suing people to oblivion is unfair. But to layer hypocrisy on top of that unfairness is just gross. How about you get your own house in order before you target your next Minnesota mom?

The same copyright barons pushing SOPA, the awful internet, are enormous hypocrites, TorrentFreak reports. They want the law as a means of stopping online piracy—but maybe they should start with their own employees.

A Russian BitTorrent tracking firm traced pirated movies and television show downloads back to IP addresses from Sony, Fox, and NBC—as TF points out, "these are the same companies who want to disconnect people from the Internet after they've been caught sharing copyrighted material."

This shouldn't surprise anyone. When studios push fascist copyright law, they're speaking on behalf of their shareholders, not the thousands of people they employ. Those people are ordinary people, who, yes, sometimes pirate albums, movies, shows, and games, like millions of other ordinary people around the world. But the hypocrisy is more than superficial. We shouldn't ever let companies that can't control their own miscreant employees shape federal legislation for all of us.

As heat continues to build around the controversial and contentious Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), one site is taking matters into its own hands to out opponents of piracy as pirates themselves.

YouHaveDownloaded.com is a site that keeps track of everything you have downloaded from file-sharing sites and torrents. The site tracks IP addresses (an identifying number given to computers attached to the Internet) that use sites such as the BitTorrent network. It then matches these IP addresses with a list of files that have been downloaded.

Logging into YouHaveDownloaded.com will do a quick cross-check of your IP with the site’s database of potentially pirated downloads and show you your potentially criminal download history. More impressively, you can use the site to look up other IP addresses, torrent hashes or specific files.

At time of writing, the site has a database of nearly 54 million users (IP addresses), more than 118,000 torrents and more than 2 million files.

While this sounds like trouble for illegal downloaders, the site, designed as an open tool for anyone to use, is actually being used to bust people that support stricter online piracy laws.

SOPA is a bill designed to curb and punish online copyright violations. It has been supported by media companies, especially those in Hollywood and the film business. The bill, however, would impose tough penalties on websites for any kind of copyright infringement even if it was uploaded externally. The classic example is that a video on YouTube of Justin Bieber singing another artists song without permission would not only land Bieber in court but also put YouTube at risk of shut-down. The bill has turned into a fight between Silicon Valley and Hollywood.

YouHaveDownloaded.com, however, is showing that the bill’s supporters aren’t so innocent. TorrentFreak, a BitTorrent blog, recently revealed that IP addresses seemingly coming from Sony Pictures, Universal and Fox had been illegally downloading content, ZDNet reported.

An IP address in the U.S. Sony Pictures address range was reported to have downloaded music and the Conan the Barbarian film, while a US Universal IP address was allegedly caught downloading Cowboys and Aliens and the first season of the HBO show Game of Thrones. A US Fox IP address was allegedly caught downloading the J.J. Abrams film Super 8.

Now that’s a sticky situation: All three companies are members of AFACT, a coalition of companies fighting copyright infringements. TorrentFreak even busted the French President Nicholas Sarkozy for illegal downloads coming from the IP address of the Presidential palace.

Of course, YouHaveDownloaded.com is not exhaustive. The site only tracks around 20% of public downloads and doesn’t keep track of dynamic IP addresses, which can be used to protect online identities. Because the site uses IP addresses, it’s also possible to have downloads appear on your history that you didn’t actually do if you’re part of a large network such as, say, Sony or Universal.

Fans of privacy need not worry, the site doesn’t keep track of personal details and the odds are low that a casual user will know your specific IP address. At any rate, we’re sure you’re safe — you’re not downloading from torrents anyways. Right?

Are you glad the site exists or is it cause for concern? Does it matter that Sony, Universal and Fox are allegedly housing pirates?

Opera developer Haavard Moen has accused Apple of repeatedly using patents to undermine the development of web standards and block their finalization.

World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), the industry group that governs and oversees the development of web standards, requires that every specification it approves be implementable on a royalty-free basis, barring extraordinary circumstances that justify an exception to this rule. The specifications can contain patented technology, as long as royalty-free patent licenses are available.

Members of W3C—a group that includes representatives from Apple, Microsoft, Google, Mozilla, and Opera—are required to disclose any patents that they hold that are relevant to each specification. Depending on how far the specification is through the standardization process, they have between 60 and 150 days to make this disclosure.

If royalty-free licensing is available, the specification can proceed as normal. Participation in the development of a particular specification obliges W3C members to offer royalty-free licensing for technology used in that specification. Nonparticipants can also voluntarily offer a royalty free license, but they are not obliged to.

If, however, there is no commitment to offer royalty-free licensing for the patents in question, a Patent Advisory Group (PAG) is formed. The PAG will then assess whether the patent is truly applicable to the specification, and if so, how best to address the issue. The PAG might then seek prior art to invalidate the patent, or it might recommend that the specification be modified, to work around the patent. It might even advise abandonment of the specification. Only in exceptional circumstances will it decide that the specification should stand, in spite of the lack of royalty freedom.

Without an appropriate patent grant, browser vendors—whether open source or proprietary—cannot implement the specification without opening themselves up to a lawsuit. Such specifications would be, at best, an extremely risky proposition for anyone seeking to develop a browser, and none of the major browser vendors would even consider implementing a specification with known unlicensed patents.

Haavard identifies three separate occasions, twice in 2009, and again in 2011, where Apple has disclosed patents and not offered royalty-free licensing. In the first 2009 patent claim, Apple said that it had a patent covering W3C’s “widget” specification. A PAG was formed, and determined that Apple’s patent was not relevant. In the second 2009 claim, Apple claimed to have two patents covering W3C’s widget security specification. A PAG was again formed. It decided that one patent was not relevant, and the other didn’t apply. With both 2009 claims, Apple waited until the last minute to disclose its patents.

Touch Events

This time, Cupertino is claiming to have three patents, and an application for a fourth, that cover some of W3C’s touch event specification. This time the disclosure was made with about a month left to go. Again, the lack of royalty-free licensing means that a PAG is likely to be formed.

This in turn will delay the development of the specification and cost W3C members further time and money. The PAG process is not quick; the widget security PAG did not deliver its verdict until October of this year.

Haavard’s conclusion is that there is a pattern of behavior here; that Apple is trying to disrupt the standards process with its patent claims. He references the touch specification in particular—this is plainly an area where Apple has lots of expertise and interest in the technology, but the company opted out of working on the specification. If Apple had worked on the specification, it would have had to disclose sooner and offer licensing, and Haavard believes that avoiding this commitment is why Apple refused to work on the specification.

Apple’s is acting within its rights. W3C obliges members to disclose patent claims, and Apple is duly disclosing them. However, it’s easy to be sympathetic to Haavard’s argument. The two prior PAGs that resulted from Apple’s refusal to offer royalty-free patent licenses delayed and inconvenienced W3C, but ultimately on both occasions the groups decided that Apple’s patent claims were irrelevant. If Apple was hoping to keep some technology to itself, it did not succeed.

Moreover, W3C doesn’t require patent-holders to give up their competitive advantage. It’s acceptable to W3C for the royalty-free patent licenses to only cover implementations of the W3C specifications; if Apple wants to permit the royalty-free use of its touch patents in HTML5 browsers, but nowhere else, this would be an option. Such terms would allow browsers to implement the standard but still keep the technology off-limits to, for example, Android. But Apple did not offer such terms before, and so it seems unlikely that it will offer such terms this time.

Further, the only likely result of this is that Apple’s patents simply get worked around. W3C’s aversion to royalties means that it’s unlikely that it would accept any non-free license (should Apple even offer one), and the importance of touch input to phones and tablets means that W3C is unlikely to abandon the specification altogether. There’s no win possible for Apple—just wasted time and money for those seeking to make the web a more effective, more open platform.

Indeed, the result might even constitute a loss for Apple; the prior art that PAGs can uncover could jeopardize the patents themselves. The PAG subjects the patents to a certain amount of scrutiny—scrutiny that could be avoided through provision of a suitable license.

Apple has thus far not responded to our request for comment.

Apple’s work on WebKit and with W3C has undoubtedly helped the web community. But actions such as this show the company’s approach to standards and intellectual property is, at best, inconsistent, and and worst downright unhelpful: if open standards and Apple’s IP interests conflict, it’s the IP interests that win out. This may be good for Apple, but it’s bad for the open web.