The House Judiciary Committee has ceased without a vote to try to pass the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) out of committee today. At the heart of the delay is the controversial provision that would give the Attorney General the power to shut down websites for copyright infringement. Committee Chairman Lamar Smith said the hearing would resume at the “earliest practical day that Congress is in session.” That could be weeks. IT experts have warned that DNS tampering would create security risks for both website owners, ISPs, and the government itself. Yesterday, Representative Jason Chaffetz…

After last week’s high-energy American Censorship Day flew through with amazing responses from websites everywhere, much of the buzz has faded in the last few days. That simply cannot happen. SOPA, the bill that would grant power to the US government to censor websites, punish users, and have unprecedented control over the internet in general, is up for a vote next month. Despite all of the feverish activity, now is not the time to slow down. This is a sprint – the vote is next month – and the money (via campaign contributions) behind those supporting the bill is growing. Congress must be contacted….

The precedent has been set and it’s a very bad one. A US judge ruled that Twitter must release all of the details of Birgitta Jonsdottir’s account, as well as two others. Their links to WikiLeaks has put them under the scrutiny of the Justice Department after last year’s video of US helicopters shooting two Reuters reporters in Iraq. Speculation is that Jonsdottir is not the target but rather a piece of the case they’re currently building against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. “This is a huge blow for everybody that uses social media,” said Jonsdottir. “We have to have the same civil rights online…

In December, the Fed will begin monitoring Facebook, Twitter, and much of the rest of the internet in an effort to gauge sentiment of the financial world and particularly their own perception. #OccupyWallStreet isn’t the only one hitting the web. A request for proposal surfaced on Scribd in September: Federal Reserve Bank of New York (“FRBNY”) is extending to suppliers an invitation to participate in anSentiment Analysis And Social Media Monitoring Solution RFP bid process. The intent is to establish a fair andequitable partnership with a market leader who will who gather data from various…

Despite heavy support from both parties and an outcry of the people, California Governor Jerry Brown vetoed a bill passed by state legislature that would have banned searches of smartphones by police without a warrant. The ban would have prevented police officers from searching smartphones during an arrest. Many smartphones have persistent logins to personal communication services such as email and Facebook, keep track of locations the phone has been, and give access to personal contacts. This stays in line with a California Supreme Court decision that was upheld by the US Supreme Court…

Twitter is already a popular destination for political discourse, but the social network wants to beef up its involvement in politics as the 2012 election nears. This week, Twitter will begin selling political advertising in an effort to keep revenues up. “We’ve had five years to watch and observe how people are using the platform organically and we know politicians are active on the platform, and we know that consumers enjoy the messages from those politicians,” Twitter’s president of global revenue, Adam Bain, said in an interview. “We’re excited about the election cycle, and we think…

Seven states are currently taxing out-of-state online retailers. The practice, called the “Affiliate Taxes” or “Amazon Taxes”, are spreading rapidly as the catalog loophole that has protected them for years is being re-evaluated. What does this mean from one state to the next? Which states are doing it, which states are considering it, and which states are safe. Perhaps most importantly, what does all of this mean for the future of online retailers? These and other questions are discussed in this infographic by our tax-talented friends at Intuit. Click to enlarge. …

When Astronomer Neil deGrasse Tyson was on Bill Maher last week, he laid into the plans to slash NASA’s budget. When the topic of the James Webb Space Telescope came up, he broke in and said, “Don’t get me started.” Maher had him. “No, I want to get you started…” What followed was intelligent, eloquent, passionate, and truthful – all of the qualities of a rant worth watching. We posted the video he had produced about it last month, but this one is even better because it came off the cuff, from the heart. Today, he continued the attacks with a little humor in the tweet above. Go ahead, click through and…

When Jack Dorsey from Twitter brought President Barack Obama to answer questions on the social networking site on July 6th, it marked something that has never been done before. Technology met politics in a fresh and potentially intuitive way. Was the end result what everyone expected or were we “left hanging”? The questions were reportedly unknown by Dorsey or the President and were selected by the Twitter community. Things started off well with Obama breaking the ice by saying, “First of all, everyone can sit down. It’s much easier to tweet from a seated position.” So far, so good, but then he…

Regardless of which side of the debate you’re on, one thing is clear: Jeff Bezos and Amazon are fighting with everything they’ve got to keep states from imposing sales taxes on affiliate sales. In March, we reported the cutoff notices sent by Amazon to many affiliates in certain states.  The fight continues and Bezos is going on the offensive, appealing to Washington to step in and protect them. “We will continue to drop states who pass those affiliate laws, from the affiliate program,” CEO Jeff Bezos said at the ShopSmart Summit in New York in May. “In the U.S., the Constitution prohibits states…