Wikipedia founder takes 'a lot of credit' for collapse of SOPA

At RSA Europe, Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales said the site's blackout played a key part in defeating the USA's controversial Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA).

The English version of Wikipedia, Reddit and hundreds of other smaller websites coordinated a notional service blackout for a day in mid-January to raise awareness of SOPA. Wales described SOPA as introducing a Chinese-style blocking system in response to complaints about copyright infringement. In response, Wales said, 10 million people contacted Congress (an unnamed senator told Wales) and the bill was pulled days later.

Jimmy Wales:

I am quite anti-piracy. This was a strike against bad legislation.

20% of online newspapers now have paywalls

More than one-fifth of U.S. newspapers now require a paying subscription for full digital access, twice the number that did a year ago.

That's according to News&Tech, whose growing list of newspapers with metered paywalls or some other form of digital subscription plan has surpassed 290. There are 1,387 daily newspapers in the U.S. as of 2009, says a Pew study published earlier this year.

Girl Gets Locked Up For Saying LOL on Facebook

One teen's misguided sense of humor earned her jail time when she posted a Facebook status update LOL-ing at the fact that she was cited for DUI.

Kentucky teenager Paula Asher had one too many that fateful night she decided to drive, and she sideswiped another car as a result. Though there were four people in the car hit, thankfully no one was hurt. Asher was cited by police for driving under the influence.

The 18-year-old laughed about driving drunk on her Facebook page after the fact, posting a status update reading,

"My dumbass got a DUI and hit a car LOL."

The judge presiding over Asher's case found little humor in a crime that results in, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, 28 deaths each and every day. Asher was ordered to shut down her Facebook page as a result, and when she refused, the judge held her in contempt of court and had her thrown in jail for two days.

Asher's told her local NBC affiliate,

"I didn't think LOL would put me in jail."

Namecheap: 99 cent coupon

From Namecheap:

Announcing our $0.99 1st year registration/transfer coupon for com/net/org domains! WELOVEU will be valid for 24 hours beginning at 6am EST 9/20 and is limited to 1 per business or household. This is your only notice, so please mark your calendars! This coupon will be limited to 10,000 uses - first come, first serve.

More Namecheap coupons.

Unitary patent brings back the software patents debate

The Committee on Legal Affairs (JURI) of the European Parliament is preparing these days in view of the discussion on unitary patent on 17 and 18 September 2012. The issue of interest is whether these discussions will bring back the return of software patents as it seems to be the case, having in view the recent patent wars in the US (like that of Apple against Samsung). There is also the threat of letting companies monopolize the market thus preventing innovation and the introduction of new products.

Several groups, like April and FSFE, call for a general mobilisation to contact all MEPs, so that the European Parliament finally tackles the issue of the software patentability.

Gérald Sédrati-Dinet, April's patent advisor:

"Software patents are a real scourge for companies and software developers. They do not contribute to innovation whatsoever, but prevent us from developing new products while exposing us to ever increasing legal uncertainty."

Although European laws prohibit software patents, the European Patent Office (EPO) has been trying for years to legalize software patents and, under the new proposal to be discussed, the power and control on the law on patentability would be left to an organisation, without any democratic control or the opinion to go before an independent court.

Under the current proposal, the European Patent Office has the right to award a patent, but also takes the final decision on whether it remains valid when someone complains.

Spanish website gets back seized domain names... After 18 months.

After a one year and a half battle with the US authorities, the sports streaming and download Spanish site Rojadirecta has succeeded in winning back its domain names, after the authorities dropped the lawsuit against it on 29 August 2012.

The .org and .com domains of Rojadirecta were seized in January 2011 as part of operation Operation In Our Sites, on a very questionable basis of intellectual property rights violation, and without any court order. The site had already been considered as legally operating in Spain by two Spanish courts.

This is not the first case of this type. In 2010 music blog Dajaz1 had its domain name seized which was returned after more than 12 months. It turned out that the seizure, initiated by the RIAA, was a mistake.

Learn how to evaluate lead generation options for B2B technology companies

This webinar will cover the 3 main options available to the B2B online marketer and discuss the critical considerations you need to be aware of before engaging in one of these programs.

• Discover if this tactic makes sense for your business
• Understand the full cost of these programs
• Evaluate the CPL vs your ARPU figures
• Get clear on timeframes and expectations
• Understand some of the impacts these will have on revenue and your sales and marketing teams
• Understand what critical questions must first be asked

Presenter: Hartland Ross