Digital Rights Saga: PIPA, SOPA, OPEN

There may or may not be a digital rights problem in America depending on who’s talking.

Operation In Our Sites is the US government’s name for the operative that aggressively targets ecommerce crimes through the joint efforts of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE), Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), the National Intellectual Property Rights Coordination Center (IPR Center), the Department of Justice, and the FBI Washington Field Office.

Together these offices have seized over 350 domain names and websites said to be illegally selling and distributing counterfeit merchandise and copyrighted materials.

In contrast to the U.S. trend for tighter digital control, Switzerland has made it illegal for any entity or person to monitor another person’s data traffic or to archive IP addresses, in an effort to gather evidence for copyright lawsuits. Korea, too, has a vastly different vision about copyright violation, privacy, and protection.

Despite the existence of Operation In Our Sites, U.S. legislators continue to spew forth proposal after proposal in an attempt to further regulate ecommerce and steepen punishments for copyright and international exchange violations.

SOPA and PIPA, subject of the unprecedented mass internet protest on January 18, 2012, are the two most recent proposals developed in the US Senate and House of Representatives. Had these passed, all internet service providers (ISPs) would have been required to keep database archival and retrieval systems containing eighteen months worth of IP records on every customer.

SOPA architect was House Judiciary Committee Chairman, Lamar Smith (R-Texas). PIPA architect was Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT), Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman.

Another digital regulating bill, called COICA (Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act), was placed on the table in September 2010 by Senator Leahy (D-VT). The intent was to go after “rogue websites” and authorize the Attorney General to confiscate any domain found “dedicated to infringing activities.”

Public Knowledge (PK), a non-profit dedicated to digital freedom, lobbied against COICA. Other organizations opposing COICA included Center for Democracy and Technology, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Distributed Computing Industry Association,  Tim Berners-Lee, the American Civil Liberties Union and Human Rights Watch.

In favor of COICA were the Motion Picture Association of America, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the Screen Actors Guild, Viacom, the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees, Moving Picture Technicians, and Artists and Allied Crafts of the United States.  READ MORE

Buy Books on Wednesday!

Buy Books on Wednesday & Support the Arts. Wednesday, May 25, from 5-7 p.m.,Eagle Harbor Book Company will give Bainbridge Arts and Crafts a percentage of their sales. Come out and support Bainbridge Arts and Crafts at Eagle Harbor Books, beautiful downtown Winslow on Bainbridge Island WA.

Bainbridge Island Bald Eagle: It’s a Boy!

Male Eagle Scopes Out Yard. as observed by Ann J Warman

What I learned from Big Red’s Eagle Sex Education video is that the bald eagle we spotted scoping out our Bainbridge Island yard the other day is a young, healthy male. By young I mean older than five years since he’s already displaying that gorgeous, fluffy white head, but younger than say, 10. His cap is exceptionally pure white and so fine-looking, I wish I could pet it. His mouth doesn’t go back as far as the Decorah Iowa female’s does and he has guy-liner. I wouldn’t exactly call him the picture of innocence, but he wasn’t as grimacing as one would expect a female eagle might be.

Though we didn’t have a high-resolution camera, what we had was good enough to study him more closely after we got his image on computer. He’s healthy, his under skirt of white plummage is radiant and perfect, and he’s not particularly afraid of humans, judging by how close he let us get to him.

We just last week completed building our screened-in catwalks to protect our kitties on their outdoor excursions and to prevent them from catching birds. It seems to have foiled that eagle because he hasn’t stopped in since, as if he’d been dreaming a feast of cat guts for his offspring and now sees they’re off-limits. He does still fly over head each morning around 11:00 am, distracting me for a moment to briefly look up from my work and see him flying northward, toward Fay Bainbridge Park.

Sex Ed for Eagle Lovers

comments by the ever-curious Ann J. Warman

Not all eagles are hims, some are hers. But who’s to know? Well, here’s the vid from bigreddiggy at Raptor Resources Anonymous that explains all that.

In short, Big Red points out that Mom’s got a bigger beak than Dad and hers goes much further back on her head, so one presumes she’s got the bigger toothless mouth. She’s also 30% heftier and has a grimace that means no uncertain business. Her eyes are recessed as if she wears grey shadow all over the top of her brow and she has a few salt-and-pepper feathers in her cap. Dad, on the other hand, is more compact, wears guy-liner around his bright irises and bleaches his head a brilliant, manly-man white. And, he’s got a dot tatoo under his right eye.

FYI, the Decorah couple’s egg-laying commenced on February 23, 2011 when Mom dropped the first of three, right into their spacious nest overlooking a gorgeous little Iowa stream. Then came six-weeks of squatting duties, parents sharing warming and hunting functions.

The third baby hatched yesterday, 4/6/11, so the timeframe went like this: 2/23: Mom lays the first egg… 4/2: baby #1 hatched 4/3: baby #2 popped 4/6: baby #3 emerged