Here is a white paper on why implementation of SOPA and PIPA is wrong – http://www.circleid.com/pdf/PROTECT-IP-Technical-Whitepaper-Final.pdf

Here is the letter by VCs.

Thursday, June 23, 2011

Members of the U.S. Congress,

We write to express our concern with S. 968, the PROTECT IP Act (“PIPA”). As investors in technology companies, we agree with the goal of fostering a thriving digital content market online. Unfortunately, the current bill will not only fail to achieve that goal, it will stifle investment in Internet services, throttle innovation, and hurt American competitiveness.

Online innovation has flourished, in part, because the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), though flawed, created clear, defined safe harbors for online intermediaries. The DMCA creates legal certainty and predictability for online services — so long as they meet the conditions of the safe harbors, including an appropriate notice-and-takedown policy, they have no liability for the acts of their users. At the same time, the DMCA gives rights-holders a way to take down specific infringing content, and it is working well.

We appreciate PIPA’s goal of combating sites truly dedicated to infringing activity, but it would undermine the delicate balance of the DMCA and threaten legitimate innovation. The bill is ripe for abuse, as it allows rights-holders to require third-parties to block access to and take away revenues sources for online services, with limited oversight and due process.

In particular:

By requiring “information location tools” — potentially encompassing any “director[ies], index[es], reference[s], pointer[s], or hypertext link[s]” — to remove access to entire domains, the bill puts burdens on countless Internet services.

By requiring access to sites to be blocked by Domain Name System providers, it endangers the security and integrity of the Internet.

The bill’s private right of action will no doubt be used by many rights-holders in ways that create significant burdens on legitimate online commerce services. The scope of orders and cost of litigation could be significant, even for companies acting in good faith. Rights-holders have stated their interest in this private right of action because they worry that the Department of Justice will not have enough resources to initiate actions against all of the infringing sites. Yet, why should costs be shifted to innocent Internet entrepreneurs, most of whom have budgets smaller than the Department of Justice’s?

While we understand PIPA was originally intended to deal with “rogue” foreign sites, we think PIPA will ultimately put American innovators and investors at a clear disadvantage in the global economy. For one, services dedicated to infringement will simply make their sites easy to find and access in other ways, and determined users who want to find blocked content will simply shift to services outside the reach of U.S. law, in turn giving a leg up to foreign search engines, DNS providers, social networks, and others. Second, PIPA creates a dangerous precedent and a convenient excuse for countries to engage in protectionism and censorship against U.S. services. These countries will point to PIPA as precedent for taking action against U.S. technology and Internet companies.

The entire set of issues surrounding copyright in an increasingly digital world are extremely complex, and there are no simple solutions. These challenges are best addressed by imagining, inventing, and financing new models and new services that will allow creative activities to thrive in the digital world. There is a new model for financing, distributing, and profiting from copyrighted material and it is working — just look at services like iTunes, Netflix, Pandora, Kickstarter, and more. Pirate web sites will always exist, but if rights holders make it easy to get their works through innovative Internet models, they can and will have bright futures.

Congress should not chill investment and reduce incentives to work on private sector solutions. Instead, we encourage Congress to focus on making it easier to license works and bring new, innovative services to market.

Sincerely,

Marc Andreessen, Andreessen Horowitz
Brady Bohrmann, Avalon Ventures
John Borthwick, Betaworks
Mike Brown, Jr., AOL Ventures
Brad Burnham, Union Square Ventures
Jeffrey Bussgang, Flybridge Capital Partners
John Buttrick, Union Square Ventures
Randy Castleman, Court Square Ventures
Tony Conrad, True Ventures
Ron Conway, SV Angel
Chris Dixon, Founder Collective
Bill Draper, Draper Richards
Esther Dyson, EDventure Holdings
Roger Ehrenberg, IA Ventures
Brad Feld, Foundry Group
Peter Fenton, Benchmark Capital
Ron Fisher, Softbank Capital
Chris Fralic, First Round Capital
David Frankel, Founder Collective
Ric Fulop, North Bridge
Brad Gillespie, IA Ventures
Allen “Pete” Grum, Rand Capital
Chip Hazard, Flybridge Capital Partners
Rick Heitzmann, FirstMark Capital
Eric Hippeau, Lerer Ventures
Reid Hoffman, Greylock Partners
Ben Horowitz, Andreessen Horowitz
Rob Hutter, Learn Capital
Mark Jacobsen, OATV
Amish Jani, First Mark Capital
Brian Kempner, First Mark Capital
Vinod Khosla, Khosla Ventures
Josh Kopelman, First Round Capital
David Lee, SV Angel
Lawrence Lenihan, FirstMark Capital
Kenneth Lerer, Lerer Ventures
Jordan Levy, Softbank Capital
Greg Mauro, Learn Capital
Jason Mendelson, Foundry Group
R. Ann Miura-Ko, Floodgate
Howard Morgan, First Round Capital
John O’Farrell, Andreessen Horowitz
Tim O’Reilly, OATV
David Pakman, Venrock
Eric Paley, Founder Collective
Alan Patricof, Greycroft Partners
Danny Rimer, Index Ventures
Neil Rimer, Index Ventures
Bryce Roberts, OATV
Bijan Sabet, Spark Capital
David Sze, Greylock Partners
Andrew Weissman, Betaworks
Albert Wenger, Union Square Ventures
Eric Wiesen, RRE Ventures
Fred Wilson, Union Square Ventures

We salute you for the courage and determination you have shown over last week.Through your movement you have made every Indian aware of his/her power. We have stood by you in our fight against corruption.

I am really proud to say that we are fighting peacefully against corruption, but I also believe our fight should be very well thought out, we should solve the root of the problem. When we say, our goal is right, we should make sure that path we are taking is right as well.

I have few objections to the path which you have chosen.I am proud of myself because we are the second largest democracy in the World. You always have the right to go on indefinite fast, but saying that, “Government should PASS the bill, or I will die”, will not show Right path to the People of India. Anna, in this age of darkness, where we don’t have a strong political leader, we are looking towards you as our leader, who will show us the right path. If we want to pass any other good bills; are you suggesting we will have to go on fasting, till all the bills are passed? Is this how we want to run our country? I am aware of the frustration everyone has against the current system, but saying its system’s fault and going on fast till death to meet our demands,would be very naive and immature.

You and your team says, there have been lot of discussions on this bill, you have taken opinion of the people for it, which is great(simply because lot of people are supporting anything doesn’t mean that is right thing), but that doesn’t mean we should FORCE government to pass only OUR draft of the bill. This will do injustice to other people’s views (there are some other drafts by some other NGOs as well). Even if we succeed in this way it will set a trend to get anything done.

The long term solution I see is, you and your team should form a political party, face the elections, we will elect you as a majority in Parliament. This way we can get lot of other good bills passed. As they say, “To change the system we should become part of the system”. Lets become part of the democracy and fight in a systematic way. We always say, “Why we can not have Good politicians? Why cant WE, as Indians, elect Good People? Why Good people are not part of the system?”.

This movement is very good start, but in the long run India needs, Good people to join politics, you and your team can take a lead in doing that, you should start a political party! (Should I say “I will go on indefinite fast, until you start a political party?”).

Lets become part of the democratic system to make it strong and lets run our India more systematically.

Thanks,

An Indian.

Jason Fried @ Big Omaha 2009 from Big Omaha on Vimeo.

Update: More latest videos -

Video:

Watch live video from Startup School on Justin.tvSlides:

DO or say practice innovation, WITHOUT knowing how to do it so they spend most of their time by irrelevant activities to kill time, and then IBM guys come up and say We are doing it!, sounds great. I love this one the most .

I believe meaning of these two words; Innovation and Entrepreneurship; has always been; and will always be, evergreen in Human evolution. Main reason for that is these two words imply Change and Growth; which is what Life is all about. So it is not surprising that as we march ahead towards knowledge society these words will become more important; and everyone wants to DO innovation; but hardly anyone knows how to do it. One man has the answer.

Recently while surfing through huge collection of books in Gadgil Economics Library, Pune I bumped into a classic book by Father of Management, Peter F. Drucker titled, Innovation and Entrepreneurship. After reading it my respect for Peter Drucker has grown considerably. He proposes a model by which we can convert these two highly abstract words into a practice; as in Medical practice or a law practice. The same way he converted old so called getting things done concept into a practice of Management, through his numerous books. It took almost 10-20 years for people to understand what he was talking about and I think it will take a lot more to understand what he means by Innovation as a practice and then DOING it.

Challenges of 21st century or a century where we will move to knowledge society, are many and it’s must that we understand the nature of new Knowledge society and also the true meaning of these two words. I believe Peter Druker’s books will surely guide all of us through that transition.