Gadgetory

hi everyone welcome to a very special edition of reporters roundtable and welcome back to San Francisco this is our first show in 2012 back in San Francisco studio we were at CES last week of course I was planning on starting round table this year on Friday in our normal slot but there's so much happening today that we had to do a show today on SOPA the Stop Online Privacy Act and PIPA what does people stand for protect IP act yeah anyway these are both two really important pieces of legislation that are heading two votes very shortly and in protest of these these bills which I'm sure you've heard of several rather major sites have gone dark they've black themselves out to say we protest these at these these bills and we will be at back online tomorrow until then we're doing this to show you how important this stuff is to us now to talk about what these protests mean what effect they are having what this means for the future of the Internet in the future of this legislation we have two great guests both joining us by Skype first of all our chief political correspondent for CNN news it's Declan McAuliffe Declan thank you so much for joining us thanks and also joining us from the electronic frontier foundation is activist Trevor Timm Trevor how many jobs can you have where you get paid to be an activist I mean I might have one of the only ones but you're lucky man it must be fun interesting oh especially now so it's a very exciting day today is January the what is it the 18th January 18th the day wikipedia went black the way today craigslist went dark the day Google censored its own logo a gentleman declan first what why are these sites doing this what is behind these protests well this is uh what could be a historic moment in the history of internet politics and maybe even American politics this is pretty remarkable the reason the sites are going dark and you're seeing all of Wikipedia go offline if you're a student well-being of your homework a day early is to protest to stop off of the Stop Online Piracy actor and the protect IP act which collectively would create kind of an Internet blacklist this is a list of copyright holders and the Department of Justice would come up with that would get court orders and then the US Internet service providers comcast ATT whatever you use at home you just couldn't get to these sites anymore these are would be primarily offshore sites that are accused of infringing piracy and so there are some free speech problems with that but how we can go into those later that's kind of a high-level view and the protest is has been planned for a few weeks and it's actually having some impact already you have five four senators so far today or sponsors of protect IP say oh yeah okay and no more we're withdrawing our names it's fascinating stuff Trevor from the eff what first of all was the eff involved in organizing or being a part of it in any way of this joint to protest yeah we've been working behind the scenes on this for a couple weeks ever since we found out that it might happen Retta of course started it a few weeks ago and then Wikipedia followed which is great they're the six largest US site they get 25 million hits a day and you've seen it already with the congressmen and Senators coming out against this bill today I think the last count was 29 congressman had said they would oppose the bill today that they were either for the bill before or hadn't made a decision and I think that numbers a couple hours old and there's been a few more 14 Rhode Island and one from Maryland since we've been on the air um so it they're falling like dominoes so what's blacked out today and and and when does this end we talked about Wikipedia and craigslist being two very big ones pop URLs reddit a huge site social site is down any other big sites that are they're not down to excuse me they're blacked and in fact on wikipedia it's very interesting because you'll sheet you'll see a flash of a page and then you'll get this pop-up page in front sayin you know we're off for the day any other big sites that are today well wired is protesting BuzzFeed is protesting all an eff I've is showing solidary by darkening our whole website all in all I think there's about seven thousand sites that are currently doing this there is an easy easy widget you can get for your wordpress personal blog it can black it out very easily and it's great because you know a lot of the tech world have have known about these bills in the dangers for a few months but it's the ordinary Americans that were that we're really trying to target with this because as you might have read many of the network news casts have been basically ignoring these bills even though it's been the talk of the tech industry for a couple months and finally people you know if there's 25 million people going to Wikipedia day you know there's going to be millions literally to learn about this for the first time and we're seeing this the the so-called network TV blackout kind of fade away tonight actually our own Julie Samuels is going to be on ABC world news tonight so and then obviously we saw this morning on the front page the New York Times Washington Post LA Times USA today was all about the protests so it's really captured the imagination of the public I think declan any surprises of the event the effect of these black got any surprises if these are having well let's see uh it would have been pretty easy for google.com and amazon com facebook com and so on to say here's how to contact your member of Congress we use geolocation to try to serve you ads we know that you're in a Palo Alto over San Francisco or whatever and it'll throw bad that are irrelevant to you and then you could have really overwhelmed the switchboard get could have found this could have been a really historic day when it comes to really pressuring Congress putting the screws to members of Congress but instead they chose a milquetoast approach it was google's let's just have a petition these on a petition like if you remember how i do you hear about petition hear what calls to your office and the amazon has had a link to a trade association facebook just how to walk from Mark Zuckerberg and so they could have done much more wikipedia did do more but that they didn't it wasn't quite the nuclear option that I wrote about last month instead it was just maybe a heavy artillery option and so when I talked to members of Congress because the switchboard was still up and running they reported heavy volume but some said well you know we've had worse when it's abortion or gun writing something like that we've had lot more calls and we've and they I heard numbers between three hundred and four thousand calls today to members of Congress or senators that's but that's a piece that's a lot but it's not millions so there was enough of an effect so the withdrawal of support by key members of Congress is a direct response to these blackouts today is it not it is but let's also put in perspective you had 41 sponsors of say the Senate protect IP bill going into today now we have 40 1-4 so in other words it had the ten percent impact of ninety percent of the sponsors are still saying we like it and they might be saying we like it was reservation to certainly know what's going on but it's not like it's half of them dropped off or something like that so since these these congressmen and women are now expressing reservations about this bill will that cause the vote for this or for this legislation to be delayed in any way or is it going to be redrafted and go to a vote on schedule well we don't know yet it's a very fluid situation Senator Harry Reid said on me depressed earlier this week that oh yeah we're going forward with the floor vote which is scheduled for January 24th the day after the Senate returns from its holiday recess and in terms of the house and the sofa bill its author a representative Lamar Smith said yesterday yeah we're going ahead with a committee vote as scheduled next month we're gonna get this reported out and move to the House floor as soon as we can Republican leadership is having some second thoughts about how it's going to happen it real things it's just too early to say uh Trevor from the FF you guys are tracking all these sites that are protesting the PPA and SOPA when is this are these protests going to end or is this going to pick up steam and are are we going to see tomorrow being what's tomorrow going to look like on the web when the 24-hour blackouts are supposed to end on the big sites um well I mean these are going to be continuous protests obviously the sites won't be blacking out like they are today but we plan on continuing this fight because as Declan said the Senate is voting next week I just want to push back in a little bit of what he was saying um you know it's been less than 24 hours since this main protest started and we've seen huge numbers google has a petition as Declan said and it's gotten over four million signatures today which is just an astronomical number for being up for what 12 16 hours now ah eff alone has sent over 750,000 unique emails to Congress today um and that's not including the dozen other organizations who are mobilizing people um you know having 29 or 30 congressman's switch their position and one day I think's kind of a big deal and sicker so I tremor sorry to interrupt but you got four senators to switch their positions out of 41 we're not talking about people who've never never really liked it in the first place we're talking about actual sponsors listed on the bills web web page you know one of the things I very one of the things I'm very curious about is uh declan to go back to that point you're talking about sponsors of this bill who in light of this internet protest which is not even as big as it could have been have changed their positions kind of egg on their face for maybe not reading the bill they sponsored ahead of time or what's going on with these with these folks I think so my colleague our colleague Eleanor Mills contacted all of the sponsors of sofa in the house and I contacted all the sponsors of protect IP and that's why ever I think a reasonably good feel for where they stand and and how many are defecting but it's thinking to think of it this way I mean if you're a member of Congress you've been supporting all these MPAA are a back bills for the last decade it's only since the DMCA since the no electronic theft ackwards made not a non-profit contrary infringing a federal felony The Hollywood has kind of got what they wanted there's been this with one exception maybe the senator senator Hollings build an implant copy protection technology spit a ratchet effect that noose tightening whatever metaphor you want to use they're getting what they want out of Congress and so if you are if you want to cozy up to the NPA or you think that you know maybe you are a Republican you think property rights extend due into intellectual property rights you can there's little cost a year ago in signing on to this kind of legislation and you may have not really paid close attention to it but now there's a price to be paid this is this is the real victory for the internet if it actually pans out now I want to talk about the loyal opposition to these protests there are several sites we in addition we mentioned WordPress is another one who are very vocally opposing these bills but there are some sites and some people who are taking either moderate positions or are supporting it throwing the weight behind these bills in fact or writing these protests in particular some media organizations a Trevor or Declan do you want to talk about the opposition to these protests I'm sure I can do the few record not take it okay well like I was saying before um you know all the content companies which owned the the major television networks have been against these bills for a long time it's kind of turned into a you know internet community tech sector versus Hollywood and the NPA has come out and said today that you know these protests haven't really worked because they didn't get the big sites um but you know I think that's a little disingenuous they're trying to just put a spin on it given that Google has a petition on their front page which they've never done before you know Wikipedia with their 25 million users so you know they're trying to spin this in in a sense to make it seem like you know this is just a publicity stunt but it's really getting people who have never heard about these bills before to act and that's all we can ask for you know I think the problem is that when people hear copyright a certain segment of the population kind of tunes out because there's always copyright bills in Congress I believe since about nineteen ninety-five there's been 32 bills that have been passed through Congress that have strengthened copyright protections and so you know they didn't realize how this is going to affect ordinary Internet users is as just law-abiding citizens who don't infringe on copyright so hopefully that's what we're getting out of this that we're getting the people who normally wouldn't pay attention to the political process kind of jumping in and making their voice heard Declan can you discuss the wall street journal and also Rupert Murdoch's opposition to these protests as stunts oh no I mean I have a lot of respect for the quality of writing an argument on the wall street journal editorial page agree with it or not I probably do a half the time and there's nice recently well well argued editorial today I don't think they're just carrying water for the content industry I think that they're falling into the trap that some conservatives do and that is we like property rights this is the this is a fundamental to a conservative or libertarian position and so therefore intellectual properties we have to defend defend with the same vigor but if there are some differences we can talk with those in some detail but and that's why this is something that splits the conservative community if the Heritage Foundation has expressed concerns with the legislation the libertarian groups like tech freedom kato SI e I have as well when you have other other groups some other conservative groups including Americans for Tax Reform concerned women for america and lamar smith who represents a conservative district in texas hill country's got a 0% rating from they around abortion rights group I mean this is a conservative fellow but would be supporting the legislation is so I one more point and that is in terms of Rupert Murdoch can that I'm his twittering now that I was just kind of kind of silly and he's new to new to Twitter and was taking some hot shots at Google on some of the other companies that don't exactly like this legislation now it's interesting there are also voices in the middle which I find very interesting for example Twitter Ditka solo the CEO of Twitter says closing a global business in reaction to a single issue national politics is foolish and that was on where was that on quisitor I think I found that an interesting quotation you know there I think that that echoes some of the derision against the protests where some people have been saying that shutting down Wikipedia or shutting down our potentially Twitter or something like that is I wouldn't call it a national security issue but it's taking down services that people rely on for what other people see as grandstanding it let's talk about the the moderate position the Castello saying this is not the right way to protest this issue yeah I mean I I think he felt you even said that he was kind of taken out of context there yeah I think he was talking about just Twitter and not Wikipedia and these other sites in general but you know I can understand his position because you know Twitter's fundamentally different service than Wikipedia Wikipedia you go for information we're Twitter's kind of a communications device and by I don't even know if shutting down Twitter would have been as effective as you know millions of people tweeting about it today and amplifying the message Wikipedia is different because people go there for other information and you know they wouldn't normally hear about sopa on Wikipedia unless they specifically went there for that information so i think you know twitter has done a lot their general counsel has been writing blog posts about the subject didn't come out strongly against that they signed a letter with the other big companies I'm sorry Nestor I wouldn't necessarily fault them for that but I also want to go back to what Declan was saying about this being a conservative issue because I think it's a really good point out of the 29 Congress people who have switched or opposed the bill today 26 have actually been Republican and a lot of them are Tea Party leader leaders like Marco Rubio from Florida or jim demint from South Carolina even the long time dude sure a committee member orrin hatch from Utah came out against this bill today and he had been a co-sponsor before and it's actually strangely becoming more of a conservative issue than or republican issue than a Democrat issue I you had bred state the influential Tea Party blog saying that they were basically going to primary any Republican who was going to support SOPA even if it meant taking down some way they normally liked um and so I think that kind of caused a rift within the Republican Party and it seems like they are coming out and mass against it today at least for the members that are usually associated with the tea party declan do you think these bills have any chance now that their most loyal supporters are turning against them not quite the most loyal supporters I mean LT say members of Congress and representing Hollywood turning against this but I haven't I will be whatever on this point and that is that this is becoming them that all of the Senators who called effective my list of 41 today we're Republicans and this is becoming kind of a partisan issue generally copyright isn't but if you look at the numbers now it's a I did a google plus a post about this and it's 24 Democratic sponsors in the Senate and ten Republican sponsors and that's starting with Alexa 122.5 ratio mean this is starting to become a democratic bill and Republicans are I think they're going to enjoy finding themselves in the loyal opposition my colleague set our colleague Seth reminds me that Al Franken is a sponsor of protect IP and a Senate which might surprise some of his early supporters I I think Republicans would actually have a lot of fun be able to raise money the party of the internet now the Democrats of the party in Hollywood where would you rather be where's the money where the votes guessing yeah well this one off now as we go ahead Trevor I was gonna say Al Franken is is one of the craziest cases out there when he was talking about net neutrality he called it the greatest free speech issue of our time and he wrote an op-ed talking about how we simply shouldn't give corporations any control of the internet and now he here here he is as a co-sponsor of and he hasn't made any move toward taking that back and you know obviously these bills give corporations vast more power to censor foreign websites so it's just amazing that he couldn't say that less than a year ago and and still not come out against this bill now I want to as we begin to wrap up here look at some of the extreme positions on on these bills and try to find the truth between them on the one hand the mpaa sent out a release today in the middle of all this hullabaloo saying the protect IP act narrowly defines an infringing website is one dedicated to infringement that has no significant use other than engaging enabling or facilitating infringement and no provision of protect IP will shut off access to any site that has any non-infringing use alright that's what the NPA its supporters of the bill is saying on the other hand you have sites like pop girls which I mentioned earlier which has gone dark today this is a linked site a very useful a great site i use it that says in on its notification that the site is offline this legislation protect IP would put a site like this in trouble if it linked to a web page anywhere online that had any links to copyright infringement which of these is true and which of these is false ah well the NPA is extremely exaggerating on their claim that this this only affects foreign websites and only sites that are you know wholesale copyright infringement you know that's just not true they have taken out the most egregious provisions and SOPA which would have given corporations carte blanche to take up take out any site in the u.s. even if it was just one video out of a million that we're copyright infringed but there are a lot of a lot of provisions that still apply to american sites for example the immunity provision which gives ISPs broad immunity to over block users is so if the Justice Department is signaling that they want that they get a court order and say block the site if they block more than that site they're immune from from being sued over it they're also they can also block sites voluntarily and get immunity which means corporations can essentially make a backroom deal with these ISPs or if they own them like Comcast and NBC to shut off sites that they don't like that might be competition and then there's the anti-circumvention provision which says not only can you not you know these these sites will be censored but anything to get around the bill and it's censorship mechanisms will be censored as well so that's where people are going to have to start policing their own sites for links and that's what Wikipedia is worried about you know a simple list of IP addresses of these these block domains may be considered under this anti-circumvention provision and being joined by the Attorney General so to say that these don't affect American sites is pretty disingenuous and what about the extreme position that pop URLs which is a site has said that links to other useful sites says that any time we put a link up to an infringing site our whole site could be taken offline by protect IP or SOPA okay I mean that's probably an exaggeration that might have been true you could have read that into the bill in the original the original SOPA but after the managers amendment they took out the parts that said a portion of the site can be taken down by corporation with five days notice or cut off from payment processors so you know it's not just a link that's going to get your whole site shut down but it could get pages censored essentially mom and the ant like the anti-circumvention provision the language is really unclear so if would with the prior restraint before the page that is on for the whole website we're not really sure so there's a lot of you know holes in this bill another another part of it is the definition of foreign site you know a lot of American sites have their own domain names in other countries like google.ca or amazon.ca UK so do those fall under foreign sites and you know on the flipside Pirate Bay's piratebay.org which is a u.s. domain so are now they domestic site it's very confusing and it's very clear on the other hand that these will definitely affect us site say well okay Declan what do you think is going to happen next even following this for a while you predicted back in December that there would be a blackout based on this uh what tell us what you predict is going to happen next with these bills oh boy I I was pretty pretty right for once i inferred I'm predicting a few weeks ago they'll be a blackout today though if what I what I want to see him it's not quite a prediction it's more like a hope is that there's a houseboat scheduled well in advance and that gives Internet companies enough time to really do it right I don't want to have some sort of like sign some petition nobody really cares if you're ever primer you might be a little threatened but not as much as I say your primary challenger being fun to that and that really hurts another thing I want to see I want to see a concert on the mall in washington DC i want to see mr. a plus k on from twitter himself being the MC I want to see senator Wyden giving giving the opening remarks and the musicians who have taken to youtube and twitter to protests open protect IP obviously then do the concert you have a hundred thousand people there pretty easily will just cost a few million dollars that's nothing compared the MPAs lobbying budget if the Google and company did that it would be an amazing day we'll see the the million page march coming to the mall near you uh Trevor any final words on are we going to see more protests like this over this or similar issues in the future more big sites taking themselves offline and forms of protest what do you think well I think the sites this time took themselves off line because they thought that these bills actually threaten their existence um but you know I don't think that you know that's kind of the nuclear option as Declan said so I don't think that's going to be kind of a common occurrence but it is great to see that the internet has been mobilized this bill you know before this there was never any great urgency to petition Congress for bills and and you know there are many bills coming up in the next few years that are going to affect the internet like data retention wiretapping and kalia um so you know this is really good for online activism in general and we're going to see this continued for SOPA too because then it comes back next week we got remember a you know congressman aren't even back in Washington yet so a lot of their phone lines were closed today so when Senate couple returns next week again we're going to ask people to call and I think we're going to see a slow steady stream of senators starting to you know really really change their position and hopefully kill this bill for good Trevor thank you very much as Trevor Timm of the electronic freedom Frontier Foundation is a frontier freedom frontier Electronic Frontier Foundation thank you very much for making the time Declan McCulloch is a our senior political correspondent here seen it Thank You Declan you can find all Declan stuff on cnet news news com it is really really interesting I encourage you all to Rita these have been covering this thing for months it's fascinating coverage gentlemen thank you so much for the time thanks everyone for watching the special edition of reporters roundtable I think we will be back on Friday with a new show probably about Yahoo and everything that's going on over there so stay tuned thanks even for producing we'll see you guys all on Friday take care Thanks thank you you