10/12/2012, SOPA, the bill that was stopped by the internet because it practically made the internet illegal, has returned. Instead of a piece of legislation, though, it’s a nasty virus that uses the bill to scare its victim. It locks down your computer and then offers to unlock it for $200–not too different from other scams we’ve seen–but it uses a whole bunch of American government seals to make it extra intimidating. It […]

10/09/2012, It’s been a long time coming, but the United States’ major internet service providers are finally implementing a system which will disrupt internet service for alleged copyright infringers. Although Washington failed to pass anti-piracy bills like SOPA and the Protect IP act, this new system is effective at the industry-level. Partners include AT&T, Cablevision Systems, Comcast, Time Warner Cable and Verizon. The system is referred to as a “six strikes” plan, because most […]

01/30/2012, On January 18th, it was hard to miss what was the largest (digital) protest in world’s history as millions of people, and the largest internet companies stood up against the proposes SOPA and PIPA laws (watch the 5mn “what is SOPA” video here). If you don’t know what SOPA and PIPA are, both are basically law proposals that would end up making it impossible to have user-generated content sites and […]

01/24/2012, Over the past few weeks, the internet has been aflame with protesters who are against the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), with a number of large websites even joining the cause by blacking out their homepages as a display of their stance and to create awareness about the issue. However, it looks like some people still need to learn what they’re really going up against. According to reports online, the […]

01/20/2012, Most people could have seen this coming – with the Megaupload file-sharing site taken down yesterday, there was bound to have some form of retaliation happen; and boy did it not take long. In fact, hackers have already targeted several US government and copyright ortanization websites, where the Department of Justice (DoJ), FBI and the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) were bombarded with internet traffic. Not only that, in […]

01/20/2012, Looks like Wikipedia going dark, numerous comics drawn and articles written in protest of SOPA has proved useless (on the surface, although no human can predict the future accurately), as Megaupload has been shut down by US officials. Just in case you have been living under a rock for the longest time without using the computer, Megaupload is “just” one of the Internet’s largest file-sharing sites, while four of the […]

01/18/2012, In case you didn’t already know, Wikipedia will be down for the whole of today (January 18th) in protest of the Stop Online Piracy Act, along with a bunch of other sites. But what you may not know is that there still are ways to access the website, so no, you won’t have to fail that assignment just because Wikipedia was shut down for the day.

01/17/2012, Sony executives must be feeling the heat after hacker group Anonymous declared that they might just have a look at Sony’s servers to see if everything is up to par, probing for any defences that are ancient while looking out for weak links that they can exploit, no thanks to Sony’s declaration of support of SOPA. SC Magazine reports that Sony.com and the Sony Music store are the intended targets […]

01/16/2012, Students, cross your heart for you know how much Wikipedia has helped you out in your assignments to date – so those who have deadlines to meet might want to take note on this piece of news, where the founder of the non-profit information archive Wikipedia, Jimmy Wales, has informed the masses over Twitter that Wikipedia will shut down for a good 24 hours this Wednesday as part of his […]

12/23/2011, Last month, the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) was proposed in an attempt to curb and stop online piracy – in theory. In reality, it is a highly controversial law that if passed, would allow anyone to sue and shut down a website just because some content deemed illegal by the plaintiff was uploaded by users. While the intention behind the law seems to go in the right direction, it could easily be […]