IL Lawmakers Draft Bill to Prohibit Anonymity Online

Illinois Senate Bill 1614, sponsored by Sen. Ira Silverstein, from Legiscan:

Creates the Internet Posting Removal Act. Provides that a web site administrator shall, upon request, remove any posted comments posted by an anonymous poster unless the anonymous poster agrees to attach his or her name to the post and confirms that his or her IP address, legal name, and home address are accurate. Effective 90 days after becoming law.

Here is the top comment on the site:

We may have an early candidate for Worst Illinois Senate Bill of 2013.

First of all, Illinois does not have jurisdiction over the entirety of the internet. Illinois has jurisdiction over Illinois. Geographic location isn't all that important to the web hosting industry - for the most part, a datacenter in Chicago is just as good as one in, say, Dallas or Seattle. This means that the only thing this bill would actually succeed in doing is driving internet-related business (both individual online businesses, as well as the infrastructure that supports them, ie, webhosting companies and datacenters) out of the state.

Good job representing our interests there, Ira.

More importantly, though, this is plainly unconstitutional. It's absolutely embarrassing that any elected representative of US citizens would suggest that there should be a host of state-defined rules that must be met before one is allowed to exercise their first amendment right to free speech.

The Revolving Door Between Congress and the Industry Lobbies, Chris Dodd Edition

Since leaving the US Senate in 2010, Chris Dodd has been whoring himself out for Hollywood as the head of the Motion Picture Association of America.  Tech Dirt deconstructs the stump speech in his campaign to save the dinosaurs of the entertainment industry:

Ever since the failure of SOPA, MPAA boss Chris Dodd has been making the rounds, giving the same damn stump speech over and over again. We've reported on it before, but he's done it again, this time at the National Press Club. As the transcript shows, it's the same old story . . .

Microsoft Changes Office Licensing Conditions

From The Age:

In the push to shift customers to the Office 365 subscription model, Microsoft has rejigged the licensing conditions on retail copies of Office 2013 such as Office Home & Student 2013. People tend not to read this sort of fine print, but this bit is kind of important.

According to the fine print, retail copies of Office Home & Student 2013 are now single-license, so you can only install them on one computer. Some people interpret this as meaning that the retail license is now similar to the OEM license, which covers copies of Office that come pre-installed on a new computer. Under an OEM license you can only run Office on that specific computer. If you buy a new computer, you can't uninstall that OEM copy of Office from your old computer and reinstall it on the new one.

You could transfer a retail copy of Office from your old computer to your new computer, at least you could until now.  If you read fine print, the licensing conditions have clearly changed between Office 2010 and Office 2013. 

ISPs Want to Prevent Towns from Providing Internet Access

From Ars Technica:

Incumbent broadband providers are pushing legislation that would restrict Georgia towns from building municipal broadband networks. Under the proposal, if a single home in a census tract has Internet access at speeds of 1.5Mbps or above, the town would be prohibited from offering broadband service to anyone in that tract.

State-level restrictions on municipal broadband networks are not a new idea. Last year the South Carolina legislature passed a similar proposal with the support of AT&T. North Carolina passed similar legislation in 2011. The idea has been shot down in Indiana and a number of other states.

Municipal broadband opponents tried and failed to ban towns from building broadband networks in Georgia last year. But their case wasn't helped when AT&T's CEO said in a conference call: "we’re looking at rural America and asking, what’s the broadband solution? We don’t have one right now."

Who Will Protect the People from State-Sponsored Hackers?

In his State of the Union Address last night, President Obama emphasized the importance of protecting the country's computer networks from hackers "who steal people's identities and infiltrate private email."  But who will protect the people from US government agencies which are reading their emails, conducting illegal searches of their papers and effects, and engaging in warrantless wiretapping?  From the President's State of the Union Address:

America must also face the rapidly growing threat from cyber-attacks. We know hackers steal people’s identities and infiltrate private e-mail. We know foreign countries and companies swipe our corporate secrets. Now our enemies are also seeking the ability to sabotage our power grid, our financial institutions, and our air traffic control systems. We cannot look back years from now and wonder why we did nothing in the face of real threats to our security and our economy.

That’s why, earlier today, I signed a new executive order that will strengthen our cyber defenses by increasing information sharing, and developing standards to protect our national security, our jobs, and our privacy. Now, Congress must act as well, by passing legislation to give our government a greater capacity to secure our networks and deter attacks.  

Canadian Public Deafeats US Style Warrantless Wiretapping Bill

While many among the US public appear to be glad that the federal government is illegally wiretapping their electronic communications, the same cannot be said of the Canadians.  From the CBC:

Federal Justice Minister Rob Nicholson says the controversial Bill C-30, known as the online surveillance or warrantless wiretapping bill, won't go ahead due to opposition from the public.

The bill, which was known as the Protecting Children from Internet Predators Act, was designed to help police combat child pornography. But civil liberties and privacy groups — even the federal privacy commissioner — said the bill violated the rights of Canadians.

Opponents lobbied strenuously against C-30, saying it was an overly broad, "Big Brother" piece of legislation that would strip all Canadians of the right to privacy.
The bill would have required internet service providers to maintain systems to allow police to intercept and track online communications without a warrant.

Business and Government Collude Against the Consumer

Why is internet access more expensive and why are connections slower in the US than elsewhere?  The answer is the same as for virtually every conceivable industry: because of collusion between big business and big government.  From Gizmodo:

Here, Bill Moyers interviews Susan Crawford—former special assistant to President Obama for science, technology and innovation . . . During the interview, she explains how the US government has allowed media organizations to put profit ahead of public interest—through price hikes, rigged rules and stifling competition. As she explains, "the rich are getting gouged, the poor are very often left out, and this means that we're creating, yet again, two Americas, and deepening inequality through this communications inequality."