Shut up brain, before I stab you with a Q-tip

The Author of SOPA Is a Copyright Violator | VICE

The Day The LOLcats Died (by LaughPong)

What Could Have Been Entering the Public Domain on January 1, 2012?

YouTube Says Universal Had No ‘Right’ to Take Down Megaupload Video | Threat Level | Wired.com

UMG claims "right to block or remove" YouTube videos it doesn't own

Okay, seriously, what in the blue hell is this? So, since the DMCA isn’t broad enough to let them take down stuff they don’t have the rights to, they just struck up a secret agreement to let them take down what they want?

…the takedown was sent “pursuant to the UMG-YouTube agreement,” which gives UMG “the right to block or remove user-posted videos through YouTube’s CMS based on a number of contractually specified criteria.”

5 Reasons Why the US Domain Seizures Are Unconstitutional

…This arrest has once again raised questions about the seizure of domains operated by those that are accused, but not convicted, of copyright infringement related crimes. Critics ranging from bloggers to individual rights advocates to Senators have rightfully questioned the constitutionality of these seizures.

Tell Congress not to censor the internet NOW! - fightforthefuture.org/pipa

PROTECT-IP is a bill that has been introduced in the Senate and the House and is moving quickly through Congress. It gives the government and corporations the ability to censor the net, in the name of protecting “creativity”. The law would let the government or corporations censor entire sites— they just have to convince a judge that the site is “dedicated to copyright infringement.” 

The government has already wrongly shut down sites without any recourse to the site owner. Under this bill, sharing a video with anything copyrighted in it, or what sites like Youtube and Twitter do, would be considered illegal behavior according to this bill. 

According to the Congressional Budget Office, this bill would cost us $47 million tax dollars a year — that’s for a fix that won’t work, disrupts the internet, stifles innovation, shuts out diverse voices, and censors the internet. This bill is bad for creativity and does not protect your rights.

Warner Bros: we issued takedowns for files we never saw, didn't own copyright to

Warner Brothers admitted that it has issued takedown notices for files without looking at them first. The studio also acknowledged that it issued takedown notices for a number of URLs that its adversary, the locker site Hotfile, says were obviously not Warner Brothers’ content.