TMO Tags: SOPA

Irish Sopa statute signed

Thursday, March 1st, 2012

Yesterday, despite a popular outcry and serious objections raised, Ireland’s Minister of State for Research and Innovation Seán Sherlock signed into law the European Union (Copyright and Related Rights) Regulations 2012, a statutory instrument which has been described as Ireland’s version of SOPA. The background to the statute is outlined here and here. When news [...]

Digital censorship – Italian judges close down disaster information site

Sunday, February 19th, 2012

Imagine the closing of an entire newspaper/magazine/portal online because judges deem one simple phrase published, on one of its pages,  to be defamatory.  No need to imagine it, as it’s already happened this month – not in China, as one might think, but in the heart of the EU; Italian judges, deeming one phrase published [...]

Ireland and Italy propose SOPA like legislation

Wednesday, January 25th, 2012

While Irish and Italian citizens participated in the protests against the US SOPA / PIPA bills, it seems that their own Governments are in the process of introducing very similar measures – perhaps even harsher. The Irish government is acting  in the wake of a court case (EMI and Others Vs UPC) where record companies [...]

WordPress joins the protest against Protect IP / SOPA

Wednesday, January 11th, 2012

WordPress has mushroomed in size over the last couple of years, and its estimated that 22 in every 100 new domains registered in the States are running wordpress. And it’s not only small bloggers and internet marketers running the software – they claim that 14.7% of the top million websites are using their free open [...]