The growing anti-SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) support that has swept through the gaming and Internet community found a very big ally today. With websites like Reddit and Wikipedia and gaming organizations like Major League Gaming prepared for a blackout on January 18^th – the same day that the House Judiciary Committee hearing on HR 3261was scheduled in Washington, DC – President Barack Obamahas stepped in and said he would not support the bill.

SOPA has been delayed, for now. The House has agreed to revisit the issue next month, but they now know the White House will veto any bill that’s not more narrowly focused.

Much to the chagrin of Hollywood, the Entertainment Software Association (which has been a backer of the bill from early on), and Internet domain company GoDaddy.com (which lost many accounts as a result of its support for the bill); SOPA has been shelved. The Motion Picture Association of America, one of the bill’s largest sponsors, is expected to regroup.

California congressman Darrell Issa, who has been opposed to the bill from the beginning, praised the Internet action that has swept like a virus across the Web the past week.

“The voice of the Internet community has been heard,” said Issa. “Much more education for members of Congress about the workings of the Internet is essential if anti-piracy legislation is to be workable and achieve broad appeal.”

But there remains another similar bill, Protect IP (the Enforcing and Protecting American Rights Against Sites Intent on Theft and Exploitation Act), that poses a problem for gamers and Internet users. This legislation is scheduled to go before the Senate on January 24^th.

Both SOPA and Protect IP attempt to combat online piracy by preventing American search engines like Google and Yahoo from directing users to sites distributing stolen content. Both bills also would enable people and companies to sue if their copyright was infringed. Obama has come out against both bills, which killed SOPA and puts pressure on senators come January 24^th. The full White House response can be read here.

“Any provision covering Internet intermediaries such as online advertising networks, payment processors, or search engines must be transparent and designed to prevent overly broad private rights of action that could encourage unjustified litigation that could discourage startup businesses and innovative firms from growing,” said The White House. “We expect and encourage all private parties, including both content creators and Internet platform providers working together, to adopt voluntary measures and best practices to reduce online piracy.”

Just like piracy itself, this debate isn’t over. Expect more bills to move forward, although the wording in future legislation is expected to be more narrowly focused in an attempt to appease the current administration. But given the current economic climate and the upcoming Presidential election, there could be a different administration entering The White House soon, changing the landscape for these types of bills.

Millions of Americans oppose SOPA and PIPA because these bills would censor the Internet and slow economic growth in the U.S.

Two bills before Congress, known as the Protect IP Act (PIPA) in the Senate and the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in the House, would censor the Web and impose harmful regulations on American business. Millions of Internet users and entrepreneurs already oppose SOPA and PIPA.

The Senate will begin voting on January 24th. Please let them know how you feel. Sign this petition urging Congress to vote NO on PIPA and SOPA before it is too late.

Read More..

SOYUSA,

These Republican candidates spent in some cases more than a year — in Mitt Romney’s case seven years — campaigning in Iowa to be the next president.

But tonight, GOP voters there couldn’t decisively get behind anyone.

Who exactly leads the Republican race going forward isn’t clear, but we do know two things:

1) The extremist Tea Party agenda won a clear victory. No matter who the Republicans nominate, we’ll be running against someone who has embraced that agenda in order to win — vowing to let Wall Street write its own rules, end Medicare as we know it, roll back gay rights, leave the troops in Iraq indefinitely, restrict a woman’s right to choose, and gut Social Security to pay for more tax cuts for millionaires and corporations.

2) We’ll be facing an onslaught of unprecedented spending from outside groups funded by corporations and anonymous donors. In Iowa alone, so-called “super PACs” spent $12.9 million on almost exclusively negative ads. These groups will turn their fire even more directly on us in the weeks ahead to prove that their candidate is the most anti-Obama.

This race is officially on — and if we want to win, the only way is to out-organize them on the ground.

Sign up to volunteer now, and an organizer will follow up in the next few weeks about how you can help.

Many observers still think Mitt Romney will be the Republican nominee. If he is, we will be prepared. But it’s curious that no one can really explain how, when or why the 70-plus percent of Republicans saying in polls and in Iowa that Mitt Romney’s not their candidate will suddenly come around.

So the path ahead for Romney — or whichever of the Republican candidates is going to emerge from this process — is sadly and starkly very clear: to run even further to the extreme right, and make even more dangerous promises that threaten not only the progress we’ve made but the fundamental fabric of American society.

We also know that candidates who take these extreme positions can, in the right circumstances, win not only a primary but also a general election in just about any state.

Just ask the Tea Party senators from Pennsylvania and Kentucky, and the Tea Party governors in Florida and Wisconsin.

Watching the circus on TV, it’s tempting to think it’s almost funny — but this is not a joke.

We’ve got to be ready.

What you decide to do next will determine which kind of politics wins this election:

http://my.barackobama.com/After-Iowa

More soon.

Messina

Jim Messina
Campaign Manager
Obama for America

A day after Anonymous hacked into California Statewide Law Enforcement Association’s website, CSLEA members are still learning about the security breach.

Plus, the CSLEA homepage is still down.

The well-known international hacking group released the names, home addresses, and phone numbers of public safety professionals, many of them police officers. It also exposed credit card information on purchases made in their online gift shop.

Anonymous claimed on their post that they have 2,500 names and passwords, and in some cases, credit card numbers.

The hacker group justified releasing the information asserting, “California law enforcement officers are notorious for brutality.”

Union president Alan Barcelona said CSLEA had information taken in November. All members who had their information breached then were contacted by phone or letter. The letter, dated Nov. 10, “confirms that credit card information of customers of the CSLEA online store had been compromised”

It stated, “Fortunately, most of the credit cards that were compromised had expired.” And, it went on to state, “Additionally, all of the information which was previously maintained on the site has been purged.”

Teresa Dobbins, an employee of the Department of Justice, never got word of the breach in November. And she wasn’t informed that her personal information, including her email address, phone number, and home address, were leaked onto the web New Year’s Day, until News 10 contacted her.

“If they were aware of it, they should have tried to notify me before the media did,” Dobbins said.

“I feel so violated…I really do because that is personal information,” said Dobbins. “It’s way unnerving because all these people have your info and they know you are part of law enforcement. It makes you vulnerable.”

Retired police officer and CSLEA member Lonnie Paynter of Citrus Heights did receive the letter in November warning him of the security breach.

“I’m really concerned about that,” Paynter said. “We try to be as low key as we can being in law enforcement.”

Fortunately, his home address posted online is three years old and he has moved since then. His credit card information posted is now expired.

Monday afternoon, the CSLEA president said that staff had not notified members that had their information posted by Anonymous on New Year’s Day. He also said the union’s website remained down so security experts could determine if there were other information breaches.

CSLEA represents more than 7,000 public safety employees working for the state of California.

Homelessness is a complex problem, fraught with many associated challenges and variables. But for all of its complications, the solution to homelessness is surprisingly simple – housing.

Often, we get questions about the big issues: who, where, why, and what can we do?

In this section, we approach some of those big-picture questions about the American homeless population and how we – as individuals invested and interested in improving our community – can work to end homelessness.

Read more.. http://www.endhomelessness.org/

SAN JOSE, Calif. — A San Jose bank manager who was supposed to be taking care of a 96-year-old man’s life savings of nearly $1 million is accused of stealing money from his account to bankroll a pre-Christmas shopping spree.

The San Jose Mercury News reported Friday that investigators believe that over the past several months, Christina Bray and her husband Jimmy nearly emptied the elderly man’s account to purchase a time share, luxury cars, cosmetic surgery and diamond jewelry. They nearly cleaned out his $1 million account before elder fraud investigators caught on.

When the couple pulled up to the man’s Willow Glen home on Thursday in their new 2011 Mercedes sedan, they were arrested by the San Jose police.The couple are facing arraignment on felony elder theft charges.

Pls share this chapter of the upcoming documentary, Occupy The Movie, an indy film aiming to be entirely funded by the 99%. Please support our crowd funding campaign at: ‪http://www.indiegogo.com/OccupyTheMovie
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Of course this is just a movie. An old movie. But Chaplin’s strength through desire and want for change is jaw dropingly close to what people seem to be fighting for today. The machine, war, hatred and greed have stood the test of time in a society that thrives for more in the way of happiness, love and peace.

This video begins with random coding that appears to be coded communications between Anonymous users (still uncertain). In the coded message we noticed the term “MASS APPS”. Upon further research it has been discovered that Mass Apps may be a crash program that overloads systems by initiating more processes than the system can handle, therefore causing a crash situation. Much like the previously know “Crash Overload”,  except using app technology in place of syn code.

The video also addresses the “beta beta beta” release of ShameOnYou.US as a place for “The People” to communicate and share opinions.

TIME’s cover (in which the 99% is absent) is based on this photo of 25-yr old #OccupyLA activist Sarah Mason