The changes implied tough penalties for a range of financial crimes, including tax evasion, bribery and money laundering, as well as any action that might disrupt the country’s economy, such as a run on the banks.

Furthermore, they included an attempt at a new definition of terrorism, and a doubling of the minimum and maximum sentence attributed to crimes that are deemed to be motivated by terrorist intention.

The incorporation of such legislation came, according to local media, as an attempt to maintain the country’s seat at the G20 table. It was also a response to demands made by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), for Argentina to address its “strategic AML/CFT [anti-money laundering /combating the financing of terrorism] deficiencies.”

These deficiencies were discovered during two previous onsite evaluations conducted by the FATF in 2004 and 2009. They included technical legislative shortcomings in addressing money laundering and the financing of terrorism, and inadequate control by the county’s Financial Information Unit (UIF) over financial institutions and their compliance with regulations. Ignoring the obligations could mean ‘blacklisting’, potentially making trade to and from Argentina more complicated and more costly.

Seguir leyendo en Argentina Independent.

But SOPA and PIPA are really only the tip of the iceberg. The same forces behind these domestic U.S. laws have continued to both push for other states to pass similar domestic laws, as well as to secretly negotiate international trade agreements that would force signatory nations to conform to the same legal standards. The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), Ley Doring (Mexico), Ley Sinde (Spain), Ley Hadopi (France) are only a few examples. Members of the copyright industry lobby such as the Motion Picture Association (MPA) and the International Federation of Phonographic Industries (IFPI) are funneling huge amounts of resources into getting states to pass inherently flawed copyright enforcement laws. What results are laws that encroach on national sovereignty, overstep traditional principles of jurisdiction, harm innovation, and ultimately violate users’ rights.

Digital liberties activists and organizations internationally found the day of online action to be a golden opportunity to educate their constituents on the effects such laws would have on websites in their countries and the future of the free and open Internet. Recognizing the common thread of overbroad enforcement and technical defects that runs through these bills, the following organizations have taken a stance against the efforts of special interests to censor citizens and kill innovation in the name of preserving the entertainment industry’s business model.

U.S. spreads overbroad IP enforcement measures through secretive international agreements and threats towards trade sanctions

In recent years major copyright industry lobbyists have sought stronger power to enforce their copyrights across the world to preserve their business models. These efforts have been underway in a number of international fora including the G8 summit, transnational trade agreements such as ACTA and TPP, and the Annual Special 301 Process–a report with tiered “watch lists” of countries with supposedly deficient intellectual property laws and enforcement policies. As U.S. Public Interest Groups and EU Scholars have noted, SOPA includes a provision designed to further entrench U.S. IP rightsholders’ influence on other countries’ laws and policies. While the passage of SOPA and PIPA could certainly have longstanding consequences for societies and economies around the world, we hope the enormous attention shed on these two Internet blacklist bills raises international awareness of the impact of these copyright enforcement proposals sought by U.S. IP rightsholders worldwide.

La Quadrature Du Net, a French-based advocacy organization stated:

This site has gone dark today in protest of the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and PROTECT-IP Act (PIPA) discussed in the US Congress, as well as the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), currently debated in the European Parliament. These initiatives amount to a global attempt to censor the Internet in the name of copyright.

The Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic (CIPPIC), a Canadian-based advocacy group stated:

[SOPA and PIPA] is yet one more example of the harms that can result for an overly aggressive, no holds barred, U.S.-driven IP agenda. It imposes more restrictive standards on foreign intermediaries than the U.S. requires of its own Internet companies through its DMCA notice-takedown regime.

The Chilean digital rights advocacy group, Derechos Digitales, also framed their position against SOPA in light of the overreaching international copyright enforcement regimes:

So while many of us speak out against the U.S. bill, the governments of Chile, Peru, New Zealand, Australia, Brunei, Singapore, Malaysia and the United States are moving quickly on a new international agreement that reproduces one of the greatest threats of SOPA: censorship of Internet sites for possible infringements of copyright, giving police powers to Internet service providers. (Read here and here in Spanish)

Markus Beckedahl, Chairman of Digitale Gesellschaft, a German User Rights Group, explained to the German public:

If only half of the proposed legislation comes into force, this is going to have a huge negative impact on the internet. ACTA, PIPA and SOPA are of similar kind: Music and film industries try to destroy the net slice for slice – the so called salami tactics.

Read more here, here, here, and here (in German)

SOPA and PIPA would disrupt national sovereignty and harm local economies

In countries where policymakers are currently debating the need for website blocking proposals, the adoption of SOPA or PIPA will create pressure to mirror U.S. law regardless of any empirical evidence of its effectiveness or appropriateness. What is most disconcerting for individuals and enterprises outside the U.S. is the way in which SOPA and PIPA could effectively override their countries’ national laws and impose more restrictive standards on foreign Internet intermediaries than it does on U.S. Internet companies.

50 human rights organizations from around the world signed a letter to U.S. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid in opposition to PIPA, highlighting its serious jurisdictional and freedom of expression concerns:

…Creating a mechanism that requires a representative of a website to make a court appearance in the U.S. in order to defend themselves against an allegation of infringement would disproportionately impact smaller online communities and start-ups based abroad that do not have the capacity to address concerns in the United States.

Open Rights Group based in the United Kingdom also emphasized the due process implications of these overbroad U.S. Internet blacklist legislation:

There are two reasons that Open Rights Group are supporting a protest aimed at US laws. First, the overly broad definitions and wording of the bills put any websites at risk of action from US authorities. Second, we face many of the issues with these copyright-related bills here in the UK: inappropriate enforcement measures, in particular website blocking; overly-broad or vague definitions and wording; and weaknesses in due process and redress.

Michael Geist, a leading Canadian legal scholar on digital civil liberties and copyright, drew attention to the impact SOPA would have in Canada and its parallels with ACTA and TPP:

While SOPA is proposed U.S. legislation, it has implications for all Canadians, including provisions that treat all Canadian IP addresses as if they were subject to U.S. jurisdiction. Moreover, Canada faces the same relentless copyright lobbying campaign. From the much-criticized digital lock rules found in Bill C-11 to the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement to the proposal to extend the term of copyright protection in the Trans Pacific Partnership, Canadian copyright policy is increasingly shaped by the same groups promoting SOPA.

Global Voices Online, an international community of bloggers around the world told their readers:

[PIPA/SOPA] would raise the cost of participation on [social media and other user generated sites] for all users worldwide, and could force many social media projects to shut down, especially smaller websites and businesses.

OpenMedia.ca, a Canadian-based advocacy group warned:

As Canadian Internet users and online innovators, we have a lot to lose if SOPA is passed. SOPA could fundamentally reshape the Internet in the U.S., Canada, and the rest of the world. … Tell Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Gary Doer (Canada’s Ambassador to the U.S.) that Canadians are against SOPA.

Threatens human rights and access to information worldwide

Most of the criticism regarding SOPA and PIPA however, has focused on the way they would institute massive online censorship and fundamentally break the Internet in the name of intellectual property enforcement. These bills would encompass any foreign site accessible from the U.S. and give corporations and other private parties new powers to censor websites from around the world with court orders that would cut off domain names, payment processors, and advertisers.

Internet Governance Caucus, an international coalition of civil society organizations and individuals around the world participating at the UN Internet Governance Forum reaffirmed the free speech implications of Internet blacklist legislation:

We have made a decision to join the black out in protest of the arbitrary censorship of the Internet which violates people’s rights to responsibly use the Internet. We note with increasing concern the the various censorship mechanisms around the world including but not limited to India’s Intermediary Guideline Rules (IGR) nor the United States of America’s Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA)and Protect IP Act (PIPA). Any country’s censorship mechanisms affect ordinary Internet users all over the world.

Amnesty International, a globally recognized organization fighting injustice and promoting human rights, noted that “[PIPA and SOPA] would create a powerful and unprecedented market incentive to censor user generated content. And their passage would signal very clearly to countries around the world that it is OK to sacrifice some rights in the name of some other good.”

Greenpeace, a global environmental organization sharply denounced the laws:

If SOPA/PIPA become law, sites like Greenpeace.org could go dark simply because one of our corporate targets files a claim that its intellectual property rights have been violated. No proof required, no court hearing.

Article 19, an international freedom of expression organization stated:

[PIPA/SOPA] will stifle free speech, innovation and undermine Internet security, all for the sake of Hollywood studios.

Wednesday’s blackout day signifies a new era for the global digital civil liberties movement. Through blogs, tweets, and posts, thousands of organizations, activists, and individuals truly made it the success that it was. This has only been a sample of the great advocacy work that took place yesterday. Here are some other organizations, groups, activists and even political parties who participated on this very important day for the future of the Internet:

Association for Progressive Communications (International)
Asociacion de Internautas (Spain) reported that over a hundred Spanish page–including themselves–went dark in solidarity with their American sisters.
BytesforAll (Pakistan)
Center for Technology and Society, Fundacao Getulio Vargas (Brazil).
European Digital Rights (28 privacy and civil rights organizations members based in Europe)
Fundacion Via Libre (Argentina)
Global Voices Advocacy (International)
GreenPeace (Chile)
GreenLeft (Netherlands)- green political party
Green Party (Germany)- green political party
Internet Society India Chennai
Nupef (Brazil)
Pirate Parties of UK, Spain, Argentina, Sweden, Canada, and more
Revista do Terceiro Setor, RETS (Brazil)
Reporters Without Borders (RSF)

Cuando repasamos los hechos de 2011 vemos que este fue el año en que las disputas judiciales por propiedad intelectual saltaron a la tapa de los medios masivos. Hasta nuestras abuelas saben de la existencia de sitios como Taringa y Cuevana, dos de los portales de habla hispana más populares de la red.

Hay múltiples aristas para abordar el tema, sin embargo, hay dos que considero prioritarias. La primera tiene que ver con un hecho simple, aceptar la realidad o tratar de tapar el sol con la mano. Lo que hacen Cuevana y Taringa no es otra cosa que responder a una demanda de la gente conectada a internet: sin millones de personas que quieren intercambiar y acceder a archivos de toda índole, Cuevana y Taringa no existirían. Es más, si los procesos judiciales logran que estos dos sitios dejen de existir, miles de cuevanas y taringas seguirán pululando en la red con otros nombres, otras estéticas y otros dueños.

Los más aterrados frente a esta realidad son aquellos cuyo modelo de negocios depende estrictamente del monopolio de copia, y no ven que frente a la difusión del acceso a internet, la gran copiadora universal, todo monopolio de copia se extingue de hecho, por más que pataleen o se abracen a una ley de 1933 (La ley de Propiedad Intelectual Argentina).

Se puede discutir si intercambiar archivos en la red está bien o está mal, pero, tal como dijo el abogado español David Bravo hace unos días en una conferencia, al final de la discusión, la gente seguirá intercambiando los archivos.

Asusta ver que ante este panorama, todavía hay quienes insisten en usar el aparato represivo del estado para mantener su modelo de negocios. Asusta saber que la ley penal los ampara. Asusta pensar que un fallo contrario a Taringa definiría como práctica criminal una de las acciones esenciales de la red: enlazar. Sin links, no hay web. Y si linkear es delito, Internet en Argentina se convertirá en un entorno de máximo riesgo legal para todos los usuarios de la red.

Asusta la negativa a pensar estrategias que no impliquen la criminalización de prácticas sociales ampliamente aceptadas. Asusta la ceguera y la ignorancia, porque es desde el desconocimiento mismo del sistema de propiedad intelectual y sus objetivos que se pretende aplicar esta ley pensada para otro momento y modelo tecnológico y social. Los defensores de la propiedad intelectual olvidan que todo el sistema jurídico que le da origen a estas leyes se basa en la promoción de la cultura, y no en la defensa de un modelo de negocios. Que a fuerza de no debatir ni entender de qué se trata, creen tener derecho a controlar hasta la última ejecución de una obra de la que se dicen dueños. Y se regocijan pensando que estas tecnologías digitales a las que tanto temen serán también los instrumentos de control absoluto para cobrar hasta la última reproducción, así sea en el fuero íntimo de las personas. Porque imaginan que su derecho es absoluto y los de la ciudadanía no.

Podemos discutir si está bien o está mal intercambiar archivos, lo que no podemos discutir es el hecho de que sostener los monopolios de copia en internet tiene un costo social altísimo.

Porque el segundo aspecto de la discusión tiene que ver con iniciativas como la Stop Online Piracy Act (popularmente conocida como S.O.P.A) que se debate en estos días en los EEUU, la inclusión del sistema de Notice and Take Down (un sistema de censura privada) en la propuesta de ley de Derechos Autorales de Brasil, la firma de Acuerdos como ACTA (Anti Counterfeit Trade Agreement) leyes aprobadas como Hadopi en Francia (para desconectar a la gente de internet) o la polémica Ley Sinde en España (para dar de baja sitios).

Son estas las consecuencias y los grandes peligros de no sentarse a debatir el cambio de paradigma que conlleva la difusión masiva de Internet. Bertold Brecht decía algo así como que no hay peor fascista que un burgués asustado, y lamentablemente el rol de muchos artistas en este debate parece ser ese. Los artistas han sido sistemáticamente explotados por las grandes corporaciones de ia industria del entretenimiento, explotados por editores y sellos musicales, sin embargo, llegado el momento, se ponen del mismo lado que las corporaciones de las que muchos reniegan para apuntar al público que comparte archivos como su enemigo en esta contienda. Hablan de robo con tal liviandad … No entienden que controlar internet atenta contra
las garantías de libertad de expresión y derechos humanos, que para mantener sus privilegios, hay que avanzar sobre los derechos de la ciudadanía. Por puro optimismo, elijo pensar que no entienden y que ni bien se den cuenta harán lo que hizo Alex de la Iglesia cuando renunció a la presidencia de la Academia Española de Cine porque se vio parado del lado equivocado.

¿Quién le teme a Internet? Los que ignoran, los que niegan que Internet es una herramienta poderosa para artistas y productores. Los que creen que la única discusión es pagar o no pagar. Los que temen perder el control sobre las obras que producen sin entender que nada de lo que hagan será una obra cabal sin una sociedad que le de sentido y la comparta. Los que creen que la cultura es sólo una mercancía y que el público sólo debe sentarse a mirar y pagar.

La buena noticia es que muchos se dieron cuenta que Internet es una buena forma de llegar directamente al público, saben que la gente paga por lo que quiere pagar y comparte lo que quiere compartir, que pueden aliarse con nosotros y sacarse de encima a muchos intermediarios. Los que queremos cambiar la Ley 11723 por anacrónica, represiva e injusta somos cada día más.

Bajen, lean este .pdf y recuerden estos nombres en el futuro!

Fede Heinz, Maximiliano Gerscovich (director de Stephanie, el primer estreno cinematográfico directo a Cuevana) charlan con Irina Sternick en Tecno 23. Imperdible!

Aquí les copio textual las palabras de Adolfo Pérez Esquivel:

Buenos Aires, 16 de diciembre del 2011

El gobierno apura la sanción de leyes después de volver a asumir un nuevo mandato. La urgencia con que aprobó la ley anti-terrorista y anti- democrática tiene que ver con las imposiciones de los EE.UU. y el GAFI para asegurar sus inversiones financieras y el control de los movimientos sociales, indígenas, campesinos, trabajadores y estudiantiles.

El proyecto de ley adolece de claridad y puede ser usado para impedir los reclamos sociales. Me parece semejante a las leyes de impunidad durante el gobierno de Alfonsín, de “punto final y obediencia debida” que votaron los legisladores sin pestañear.

Hoy volvemos a los mismos vicios y con un gobierno con mayoría absoluta parlamentaria que van a votar con “obediencia ciega”.

En el proyecto de ley no se dice una palabra sobre el “terrorismo económico”.

No clarifica quien o quienes son terroristas, cuales son los parámetros para determinar los que atentan contra la seguridad del pueblo.

Si se aprueba la ley, pueden ser acusados los indígenas que luchan por su derecho a sus territorios. Los obreros cuando reclamen sus derechos laborales, es decir es una ley que viola los derechos humanos de la persona y los pueblos.

La pregunta fundamental es ¿por qué tanto apuro sin consultar a las organizaciones sociales y a juristas para evaluar la conveniencia de esta ley más anti-terrorista?

Se han sancionado tres leyes antiterroristas, ¿hasta cuando?

El país vivió actos terroristas de diversos tipos, terrorismo de Estado, las dictaduras militares; los graves ataques terroristas a la AMIA y a la Embajada de Israel, el terrorismo económico del 2001 y 2002, que postraron y saquearon el país con total impunidad.

Creemos que, más que aprobar leyes antidemocráticas, es necesario aplicar las leyes vigentes, fortalecer la seguridad de la población y capacitar adecuadamente a las fuerzas de seguridad y su formación, como disponer del equipamiento necesario.

En síntesis, generar medidas preventivas y no aplicar medidas represivas.

Hay una tendencia cada vez mayor, incluso en países como EEUU y Europa de ir restringiendo los derechos civiles y aplicando el control social y punitivo.

Los mecanismos impuestos son el miedo; en nombre de la seguridad se restringe la seguridad ciudadana. Es necesario estar alerta frente al avasallamiento de la libertad de los pueblos y que no nos arrastren a los totalitarismos

Adolfo Pérez Esquivel
Premio Nobel de la Paz

Fuente: EFF

Today, a group of 83 prominent Internet inventors and engineers sent an open letter to members of the United States Congress, stating their opposition to the SOPA and PIPA Internet blacklist bills that are under consideration in the House and Senate respectively.

We, the undersigned, have played various parts in building a network called the Internet. We wrote and debugged the software; we defined the standards and protocols that talk over that network. Many of us invented parts of it. We’re just a little proud of the social and economic benefits that our project, the Internet, has brought with it.

Last year, many of us wrote to you and your colleagues to warn about the proposed “COICA” copyright and censorship legislation. Today, we are writing again to reiterate our concerns about the SOPA and PIPA derivatives of last year’s bill, that are under consideration in the House and Senate. In many respects, these proposals are worse than the one we were alarmed to read last year.

If enacted, either of these bills will create an environment of tremendous fear and uncertainty for technological innovation, and seriously harm the credibility of the United States in its role as a steward of key Internet infrastructure. Regardless of recent amendments to SOPA, both bills will risk fragmenting the Internet’s global domain name system (DNS) and have other capricious technical consequences. In exchange for this, such legislation would engender censorship that will simultaneously be circumvented by deliberate infringers while hampering innocent parties’ right and ability to communicate and express themselves online.

All censorship schemes impact speech beyond the category they were intended to restrict, but these bills are particularly egregious in that regard because they cause entire domains to vanish from the Web, not just infringing pages or files. Worse, an incredible range of useful, law-abiding sites can be blacklisted under these proposals. In fact, it seems that this has already begun to happen under the nascent DHS/ICE seizures program.

Censorship of Internet infrastructure will inevitably cause network errors and security problems. This is true in China, Iran and other countries that censor the network today; it will be just as true of American censorship. It is also true regardless of whether censorship is implemented via the DNS, proxies, firewalls, or any other method. Types of network errors and insecurity that we wrestle with today will become more widespread, and will affect sites other than those blacklisted by the American government.

The current bills — SOPA explicitly and PIPA implicitly — also threaten engineers who build Internet systems or offer services that are not readily and automatically compliant with censorship actions by the U.S. government. When we designed the Internet the first time, our priorities were reliability, robustness and minimizing central points of failure or control. We are alarmed that Congress is so close to mandating censorship-compliance as a design requirement for new Internet innovations. This can only damage the security of the network, and give authoritarian governments more power over what their citizens can read and publish.

The US government has regularly claimed that it supports a free and open Internet, both domestically and abroad. We cannot have a free and open Internet unless its naming and routing systems sit above the political concerns and objectives of any one government or industry. To date, the leading role the US has played in this infrastructure has been fairly uncontroversial because America is seen as a trustworthy arbiter and a neutral bastion of free expression. If the US begins to use its central position in the network for censorship that advances its political and economic agenda, the consequences will be far-reaching and destructive.

Senators, Congressmen, we believe the Internet is too important and too valuable to be endangered in this way, and implore you to put these bills aside.

Signed,

• Vint Cerf, co-designer of TCP/IP, one of the “fathers of the Internet”, signing as private citizen
• Paul Vixie, author of BIND, the most widely-used DNS server software, and President of the Internet Systems Consortium
• Tony Li, co-author of BGP (the protocol used to arrange Internet routing); chair of the IRTF’s Routing Research Group; a Cisco Fellow; and architect for many of the systems that have actually been used to build the Internet
• Steven Bellovin, invented the DNS cache contamination attack; co-authored the first book on Internet security; recipient of the 2007 NIST/NSA National Computer Systems Security Award and member of the DHS Science and Technology Advisory Committee
• Jim Gettys, editor of the HTTP/1.1 protocol standards, which we use to do everything on the Web
• Dave Kristol, co-author, RFCs 2109, 2965 (Web cookies); contributor, RFC 2616 (HTTP/1.1)
• Steve Deering, Ph.D., invented the IP multicast feature of the Internet; lead designer of IPv6 (version 6 of the Internet Protocol)
• David Ulevitch, David Ulevitch, CEO of OpenDNS, which offers alternative DNS services for enhanced security.
• Elizabeth Feinler, director of the Network Information Center (NIC) at SRI International, administered the Internet Name Space from 1970 until 1989 and developed the naming conventions for the internet top level domains (TLDs) of .mil, .gov, .com, .org, etc. under contracts to DoD
• Robert W. Taylor, founded and funded the beginning of the ARPAnet; founded and managed the Xerox PARC Computer Science Lab which designed and built the first networked personal computer (Alto), the Ethernet, the first internet protocol and internet, and desktop publishing
• Fred Baker, former IETF chair, has written about 50 RFCs and contributed to about 150 more, regarding widely used Internet technology
• Dan Kaminsky, Chief Scientist, DKH
• Esther Dyson, EDventure; founding chairman, ICANN; former chairman, EFF; active investor in many start-ups that support commerce, news and advertising on the Internet; director, Sunlight Foundation
• Walt Daniels, IBM’s contributor to MIME, the mechanism used to add attachments to emails
• Nathaniel Borenstein, Chief Scientist, Mimecast; one of the two authors of the MIME protocol, and has worked on many other software systems and protocols, mostly related to e-mail and payments
• Simon Higgs, designed the role of the stealth DNS server that protects a.root-servers.net; worked on all versions of Draft Postel for creating new TLDs and addressed trademark issues with a complimentary Internet Draft; ran the shared-TLD mailing list back in 1995 which defined the domain name registry/registrar relationship; was a root server operator for the Open Root Server Consortium; founded coupons.com in 1994
• John Bartas, was the technical lead on the first commercial IP/TCP software for IBM PCs in 1985-1987 at The Wollongong Group. As part of that work, developed the first tunneling RFC, rfc-1088
• Nathan Eisenberg, Atlas Networks Senior System Administrator; manager of 25K sq. ft. of data centers which provide services to Starbucks, Oracle, and local state
• Dave Crocker, author of Internet standards including email, DKIM anti-abuse, electronic data interchange and facsimile, developer of CSNet and MCI national email services, former IETF Area Director for network management, DNS and standards, recipient of IEEE Internet Award for contributions to email, and serial entrepreneur
• Craig Partridge, architect of how email is routed through the Internet; designed the world’s fastest router in the mid 1990s
• Doug Moeller, Chief Technology Officer at Autonet Mobile
• John Todd, Lead Designer/Maintainer – Freenum Project (DNS-based, free telephony/chat pointer system), http://freenum.org/
• Alia Atlas, designed software in a core router (Avici) and has various RFCs around resiliency, MPLS, and ICMP
• Kelly Kane, shared web hosting network operator
• Robert Rodgers, distinguished engineer, Juniper Networks, signing as a private citizen
• Anthony Lauck, helped design and standardize routing protocols and local area network protocols and served on the Internet Architecture Board
• Ramaswamy Aditya, built various networks and web/mail content and application hosting providers including AS10368 (DNAI) which is now part of AS6079 (RCN); did network engineering and peering for that provider; did network engineering for AS25 (UC Berkeley); currently does network engineering for AS177-179 and others (UMich)
• Blake Pfankuch, Connecting Point of Greeley, Network Engineer
• Jon Loeliger, has implemented OSPF, one of the main routing protocols used to determine IP packet delivery; at other companies, has helped design and build the actual computers used to implement core routers or storage delivery systems; at another company, installed network services (T-1 lines and ISP service) into Hotels and Airports across the country
• Jim Deleskie, internetMCI Sr. Network Engineer, Teleglobe Principal Network Architect
• David Barrett, Founder and CEO, Expensify
• Mikki Barry, VP Engineering of InterCon Systems Corp., creators of the first commercial applications software for the Macintosh platform and the first commercial Internet Service Provider in Japan
• Peter Rubenstein,helped to design and build the AOL backbone network, ATDN.
• David Farber, distinguished Professor CMU; Principal in development of CSNET, NSFNET, NREN, GIGABIT TESTBED, and the first operational distributed computer system; EFF board member
• Bradford Chatterjee, Network Engineer, helped design and operate the backbone network for a nationwide ISP serving about 450,000 users
• Gary E. Miller Network Engineer specializing in eCommerce
• Jon Callas, worked on a number of Internet security standards including OpenPGP, ZRTP, DKIM, Signed Syslog, SPKI, and others; also participated in other standards for applications and network routing
• John Kemp, Principal Software Architect, Nokia; helped build the distributed authorization protocol OAuth and its predecessors; former member of the W3C Technical Architecture Group
• Christian Huitema, worked on building the Internet in France and Europe in the 80’s, and authored many Internet standards related to IPv6, RTP, and SIP; a former member of the Internet Architecture Board
• Steve Goldstein, Program Officer for International Networking Coordination at the National Science Foundation 1989-2003, initiated several projects that spread Internet and advanced Internet capabilities globally
• David Newman, 20 years’ experience in performance testing of Internet
  infrastructure; author of three RFCs on measurement techniques (two on firewall performance, one on test traffic contents)
• Justin Krejci, helped build and run the two biggest and most successful municipal wifi networks located in Minneapolis, MN and Riverside, CA; building and running a new FTTH network in Minneapolis
• Christopher Liljenstolpe, was the chief architect for AS3561 (at the time about 30% of the Internet backbone by traffic), and AS1221 (Australia’s main Internet infrastructure)
• Joe Hamelin, co-founder of Seattle Internet Exchange (http://www.seattleix.net) in 1997, and former peering engineer for Amazon in 2001
• John Adams, operations engineer at Twitter, signing as a private citizen
• David M. Miller, CTO / Exec VP for DNS Made Easy (IP Anycast Managed Enterprise DNS provider)
• Seth Breidbart, helped build the Pluribus IMP/TIP for the ARPANET
• Timothy McGinnis, co-chair of the African Network Information Center Policy Development Working Group, and active in various IETF Working Groups
• Richard Kulawiec, 30 years designing/operating academic/commercial/ISP systems and networks
• Larry Stewart, built the Etherphone at Xerox, the first telephone system working over a local area network; designed early e-commerce systems for the Internet at Open Market
• John Pettitt, Internet commerce pioneer, online since 1983, CEO Free Range Content Inc.; founder/CTO CyberSource & Beyond.com; created online fraud protection software that processes over 2 billion transaction a year
• Brandon Ross, Chief Network Architect and CEO of Network Utility Force LLC
• Chris Boyd, runs a green hosting company and supports EFF-Austin as a board member
• Dr. Richard Clayton, designer of Turnpike, widely used Windows-based Internet access suite; prominent Computer Security researcher at Cambridge University
• Robert Bonomi, designed, built, and implemented, the Internet presence for a number of large corporations
• Owen DeLong, member of the ARIN Advisory Council who has spent more than a decade developing better IP addressing policies for the internet in North America and around the world
• Baudouin Schombe, blog design and content trainer
• Lyndon Nerenberg, Creator of IMAP Binary extension (RFC 3516)
• John Gilmore, co-designed BOOTP (RFC 951), which became DHCP, the way you get an IP address when you plug into an Ethernet or get on a WiFi access point; current EFF board member
• John Bond, Systems Engineer at RIPE NCC maintaining AS25152 (k.root-servers.net.) and AS197000 (f.in-addr-servers.arpa. ,f.ip6-servers.arpa.); signing as a private citizen
• Stephen Farrell, co-author on about 15 RFCs
• Samuel Moats, senior systems engineer for the Department of Defense; helps build and defend the networks that deliver data to Defense Department users
• John Vittal, created the first full email client and the email standards still in use today
• Ryan Rawdon, built out and maintains the network infrastructure for a rapidly growing company in our country’s bustling advertising industry; was on the technical operations team for one of our country’s largest residential ISPs
• Brian Haberman, has been involved in the design of IPv6, IGMP/MLD, and NTP within the IETF for nearly 15 years
• Eric Tykwinski, Network Engineer working for a small ISP based in the Philadelphia region; currently maintains the network as well as the DNS and server infrastructure
• Noel Chiappa, has been working on the lowest level stuff (the IP protocol level) since 1977; name on the ‘Birth of the Internet’ plaque at Stanford); actively helping to develop new ‘plumbing’ at that level
• Robert M. Hinden, worked on the gateways in the early Internet, author of many of the core IPv6 specifications, active in the IETF since the first IETF meeting, author of 37 RFCs, and current Internet Society Board of Trustee member
• Alexander McKenzie, former member of the Network Working Group and participated in the design of the first ARPAnet Host protocols; was the manager of the ARPAnet Network Operation Center that kept the network running in the early 1970s; was a charter member of the International Network Working Group that developed the ideas used in TCP and IP
• Keith Moore, was on the Internet Engineering Steering Group from 1996-2000, as one of two Area Directors for applications; wrote or co-wrote technical specification RFCs associated with email, WWW, and IPv6 transition
• Guy Almes, led the connection of universities in Texas to the NSFnet during the late 1980s; served as Chief Engineer of Internet2 in the late 1990s
• David Mercer, formerly of The River Internet, provided service to more of Arizona than any local or national ISP
• Paul Timmins, designed and runs the multi-state network of a medium sized telephone and internet company in the Midwest
• Stephen L. Casner, led the working group that designed the Real-time Transport Protocol that carries the voice signals in VoIP systems
• Tim Rutherford, DNS and network administrator at C4
• Mike Alexander, helped implement (on the Michigan Terminal System at the University of Michigan) one of the first EMail systems to be connected to the Internet (and to its predecessors such as Bitnet, Mailnet, and UUCP); helped with the basic work to connect MTS to the Internet; implemented various IP related drivers on early Macintosh systems: one allowed TCP/IP connections over ISDN lines and another made a TCP connection look like a serial port
• John Klensin, Ph.D., early and ongoing role in the design of Internet applications and coordination and administrative policies; former IAB Chair and former AT&T Internet Architecture VP
• L. Jean Camp, former Senior Member of the Technical Staff at Sandia National Laboratories, focusing on computer security; eight years at Harvard’s Kennedy School; tenured Professor at Indiana Unviersity’s School of Informatics with research addressing security in society.
• Louis Pouzin, designed and implemented the first computer network using datagrams (CYCLADES), from which TCP/IP was derived
• Carl Page, helped found eGroups, the biggest social network
  of its day, 14 million users at the point of sale to Yahoo for around $430,000,000, at which point it became Yahoo Groups
• Phil Lapsley, co-author of the Internet Network News Transfer Protocol (NNTP), RFC 977, and developer of the NNTP reference implementation
• Jack Haverty (MSEE, BSEE MIT 1970), Principal Investigator for several DARPA projects including the first Internet development and operation; Corporate Network Architect for BBN; Founding member of the IAB/ICCB; Internet Architect and Corporate Founding Member of W3C for Oracle Corporation
• Glenn Ricart, Managed the original (FIX) Internet interconnection point
• Ben Laurie, Apache Software Foundation founder, OpenSSL core team member, security researcher. Over half the secure websites on the Internet are powered by his software.
• Chris Wellens President & CEO InterWorking Labs
• Chris Morrow Network Security Engineer at Google, and previously at UUNET. Involved in several IETF routing and security working groups.
• Dave Shambley, entrepreneur and IEEE member
• Bill Jennings, who was VP of Engineering at Cisco for 10 years and responsible for building much of the hardware and embedded software for Cisco’s core router products and high-end Ethernet switches
• Bernie Cosell coauthored the original IMP code, Terminal-IMP [TIP] and monitoring code for the NOC.
• Leonard Kleinrock, one of the “fathers of the Internet”, created the mathematical theory of packet networks, ran the UCLA lab that served as the first node of the ARPANET, and supervised the transmission of its first message.
• Rebecca Hargrave Malamud, helped advance many large-scale Internet projects, and have been working the web since its invention.

Imaginate que trabajás por siete años en una película, y se ve que no te sale tan mal porque te la premian en un festival internacional de cine. Pero lo mismo no podés estrenarla en ningún lado porque los distribuidores no se meten con obras que no son declaradas de interés de INCAA, y no la podés poner vos en las salas porque pare eso tenés que tener licencia de distribución 

Por suerte, tenemos Internet. El jueves 22 de diciembre se estrenará en formato on-line con opción de descarga en alta definición, la película Stephanie, (Ganadora Mejor Director en el Festival Internacional de Cine y Video Independiente de Nueva York – Competencia Internacional) protagonizada por Antonio Birabent y Soledad Fandiño, con la dirección de Maximiliano Gerscovich. El trailer de la película parece interesante.

Muchas gracias a Maximiliano y Fernando Baserga por compartir su película con nosotros, y felicitaciones por la claridad de reconocer a Internet como la oportunidad de expresión que es, en vez de la amenaza que otros menos esclarecidos parecen ver.

Diversas organizaciones ya se han manifestado. Por ahora, sólo voy a citar algunos de los comunicados que expresan mi sentir al respecto:

ADC se opone a la ley antiterrorista
La norma propuesta viola los estándares constitucionales y de derechos humanos en materia de legislación penal y libertad de expresión, y podría convertirse en una herramienta para acrecentar la criminalización de quienes se manifiestan en reivindicación de sus derechos.
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Greenpeace y Los verdes en contra de la Ley antiterrorista
Buenos Aires, 12 de diciembre de 2011 – Greenpeace junto a otras organizaciones sociales y particulares expresaron su profunda preocupación frente al proyecto de ley presentado por el Poder Ejecutivo Nacional ante el Congreso de la Nación para reforzar la capacidad estatal de reprimir pretendidos actos de terrorismo o a quienes los financien. El proyecto de legislación antiterrorista utiliza conceptos tan abiertos e imprecisos que “hacen posible la aplicación de estos agravantes a la gama de figuras penales típicamente utilizadas para la criminalización de la protesta social”.
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Y una excelente columna de Mempo Giardinelli en Página 12

Todo esto para finalizar diciendo: No queremos esta ley antiterrorista. No en un estado democrático sin supuestos de terrorismo en puerta. No queremos que nos pase como en Chile, donde leyes como esta se aplican para reprimir a los pueblos originarios. No, esta ley, NO>