Facebook float could value company at $100bn

Social network will cross the critical 500 shareholder mark by end of 2011, which will force it to file financial data with SEC even if it does not choose to raise $10bn in IPO

guardian.co.uk, Charles Arthur and agencies, Tuesday 29 November 2011

Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg is said to be preparing a
$10bn flotation for spring 2012. Photograph: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

Facebook, the world's largest social network, is preparing for a public stock offering next spring which could raise up to $10bn, according to sources.

The Wall Street Journal reported on Monday night that the company is hoping that the IPO, which has been long rumoured, would value the company at around $100bn.

Facebook's chief financial officer, David Ebersman, had discussed a public float with Silicon Valley bankers, but founder and chief executive Mark Zuckerberg had not decided on any terms and his plans could change, the Journal said.

The social network, which now claims more than 800 million members worldwide after seven years of explosive growth, has not selected bankers to manage what would be a very closely watched IPO.

But it had drafted an internal prospectus and was ready at any moment to go for a flotation, the Journal said, citing "people familiar with the matter" – a standard form of words for insiders at the company.

At $100bn valuation, the company started by Zuckerberg in a Harvard dorm room would have double the valuation of Hewlett-Packard.

A formal S-1 filing could come before the end of the year, though nothing was decided, the Journal added.

A Facebook representative declined to comment.

One matter which could force Facebook's hand is the number of people – especially employees – who have received stock options as an incentive for working at the startup. The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) says that "a company must file financial and other information with the SEC 120 days after the close of the year in which the company reaches $10m in assets and/or 500 shareholders, including people with stock options".

Google was forced to file for an IPO in 2004 after it passed the 500 shareholder figure. It is unclear how many of Facebook's 3,000 staff are shareholders, but the company said in January that it will exceed 500 shareholders this year, and that in accordance with SEC regulations, it will file public financial reports no later than 30 April 2012. That will be obligatory even if it does not file for an IPO.

Facebook does not disclose its financial results, but a source told Reuters earlier this year that the company's revenue in the first six months of 2011 doubled year-on-year to $1.6bn (£1bn).

If it does debut in 2012, Facebook's IPO would dwarf that of any other dotcom waiting to go public.

Farmville creator Zynga has filed for an IPO of up to $1bn. In November, the daily deals service Groupon debuted with much fanfare – only to plunge below its IPO price within weeks. It is now one of the worst-performing technology flotations ever.

LinkedIn and Pandora, which also floated this year, are now also trading significantly below the levels their stocks reached during their public debuts.

Facebook has become one of the world's most popular online destinations, challenging established companies such as Google and Yahoo for consumers' time and for advertising dollars.

Eric Feng, a former partner at venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers who now runs social-networking site Erly.com, said that the cash Facebook will get in an IPO would allow it to make more acquisitions and refine or work on new projects, such as a rumoured Facebook phone or a netbook.

Having tradeable stock will also allow Facebook to attract more engineering talent who might have been more attracted to the company in earlier days when it was growing faster but now perhaps might be attracted to other companies. "It'll be a powerful bullet for them," Feng said.

Investors have been increasingly eager to buy shares of Facebook and other fast-growing but privately-held internet social networking companies on special, secondary-market exchanges.

Related Articles:

Facebook IPO sparks dreams of riches, adventure

Are We Headed for Another Tech Bubble?

After Long Wait, Facebook Releases iPad App

Apple crowned world's most valuable company

TEDxSantaCruz: Roger McNamee - Disruption and Engagement

Related Article:

"The New Paradigm of Reality" Part I/II – Feb 12, 2011 (Kryon channelled by Lee Carroll)

(Subjects: Who/What is Kryon ?, Egypt Uprising, Iran/Persia Uprising, Peace in Middle East without Israel actively involved, Muhammad, "Conceptual" Youth Revolution, "Conceptual" Managed Business, Internet, Social Media, News Media, Google, Bankers, Global Unity,..... etc.)

Dozens Injured at Indonesian BlackBerry Launch

Jakarta Globe, Michelle Natalie, November 25, 2011

Several people suffered minor injuries as many hundreds of impatient
 BlackBerry fans broke through a barricade to get their hands on the latest
 smartphone during a discount promotion in a Jakarta mall on Friday. (Antara Photo)    

          

Related articles

• Yahoo! Koprol Integrates With BlackBerry
• First of Many BlackBerry Stores Opens in Jakarta
• Research in Motion Thanks Indonesia With BlackBerry Launch
• BlackBerry Says Services Have Improved
• BlackBerry Outages Spread to North America

Dozens of people suffered minor injuries as many hundreds of impatient BlackBerry fans broke through a barricade to get their hands on the latest smartphone during a discount promotion in a Jakarta mall on Friday.

As the crowd swelling to well in excess of a thousand people — a number of whom had been queuing since the previous day — rumors began circulating on Friday morning that the BlackBerry Bellagio, also known as a BlackBerry Bold 9790, had sold out during the event at Pacific Place mall in South Jakarta.

This and impatience and frustration caused the crowd to surge forward through a protective barrier, with reports saying that as many as 90 people needing treatment for a range of minor injuries, from losing consciousness to broken bones.

Ambulances and paramedics were rushed to the scene, with at least three people taken to hospital with fractured or broken bones.

Up to 200 police and security guards were also deployed to restore order and prevent similar scenes from reoccurring.

Sherly, 32, who had been waiting since 3 a.m., told the Jakarta Globe that she passed out in the crush.

“The mass just went crazy and began pushing each other,” she said. “It was really scary, I was squeezed by the crowd until I lost consciousness.”

Sherly, who has never owned a BlackBerry but was attracted by the massive discount, was later observed begging a BlackBerry staff member to be allowed to reclaim her position in the queue.

Sandy, a Blackberry staff member, said the queue had begun forming from 4 p.m. the previous day.

During the promotion, in which the phones were sold for Rp 2.3 million ($260) at just half the normal retail price of Rp 4.6 million.

Though each person was initially told that they needed to collect a red bracelet from management before they could purchase a phone, the rule was abandoned as the size of the crowd grew on Friday morning.

“The rules have changed,” said Karim, who had been queuing since early Friday morning. “At 9 a.m., the management said that everyone in the queue would definitely get [a phone], with or without the red bracelet.”

Speaking to the Globe at 10:40 a.m., forty minutes before the phones began selling, Karim said he was still unsure whether he would be able to get into the mall.

At 11 a.m. police were again called into action as frustration again threatened to boil over.

“Everyone, please be patient and stand in line,” a police officer yelled through a megaphone. “Please do not push each other! Everyone who has queued will definitely get a phone. Please remember your own safety.”

Arifin, a security guard with a rottweiler police dog, said the situation remained tense.

“The situation is manageable now, as long as the crowd stay in order.”

Despite the assurances of both BlackBerry and the police the event was closed prematurely at 1.30 a.m., again sparking anger.

Related Article:

RIM stops new BB launch due to safety concerns

European Court of Justice rejects web piracy filter

BBC News, 24 November 2011

Related Stories 

• Net giants fight US piracy bill
• BT readies Newzbin piracy block
• Telcos canchallenge piracy law

The European Court of Justice said that web filtering
breaches the E-Commerce Directive

The European Court of Justice has ruled that content owners cannot ask ISPs to filter out illegal content.

The ruling could have implications for the creative industries as they attempt to crack down on piracy.

The court said that while content providers can ask ISPs to block specific sites, wider filtering was in breach of the E-Commerce Directive.

A Belgian court had previously ruled that a local rights holder could force an ISP to filter content.

General monitoring

The case stems back to 2004 when SABAM, a Belgian company responsible for authorising music rights, discovered that customers of local ISP Scarlet were downloading music illegally via peer-to-peer networks.

The Brussels Court of First Instance ordered Scarlet to make it impossible for its customers to send or receive files containing music from SABAM's catalogue on such networks.

Scarlet appealed to the Brussels Court of Appeal, claiming that the injunction failed to comply with EU law.

It said that the obligation to monitor communications on its network was in breach of the E-Commerce Directive.

Seven years on, the European Court of Justice agreed.

It said that the move could affect Scarlet's ability to do business because it would have to "install a complicated, costly, permanent computer system at its own expense".

The court ruled that the filtering could infringe the rights of customers and their right to protect their own data.

It could also mean that legal content was blocked.

"Such an injunction could potentially undermine freedom of information since that system might not distinguish adequately between unlawful content and lawful content with the result that its introduction could lead to the blocking of lawful communications," the court said in a statement.

Victory

TalkTalk and BT are currently embroiled in legal action against the UK's Digital Economy Act. They claim the law - which lays out rules for combating piracy - is also in breach of the E-Commerce Directive.

While the European ruling has "some relevance" to its case, it is not directly linked, said Andrew Heaney, TalkTalks' head of regulatory affairs.

"The idea of filtering was talked about in the UK but it came off the table some time ago. This judgement is effectively about an old issue," he said.

Internet freedom organisations welcomed the news.

Peter Bradwell of the Open Rights Group said: "This judgement is a victory for freedom of expression online. It draws a thick line in the sand that future copyright enforcement measures in the UK cannot cross.

"Invasive and general surveillance of users is unacceptable. This helps to nail down the limits of powers to curtail people's freedom to communicate online."

Related Article:

Google, Facebook warn against new US piracy legislation

The pepper-spraying cop gets Photoshop justice

The casual way a policeman pepper-sprayed protesting students at UC Davis has caused outrage but also a mocking response

guardian.co.uk, Xeni Jardin, Wednesday 23 November 2011

Police lieutenant John Pike pepper sprays students at UC Davis.
Photograph: Brian Nguyen/Reuters

Nature abhors a vacuum, it is said; and the internet abhors unexplained dissonance. When photographs emerged of police lieutenant John Pike pepper-spraying University of California Davis students, it wasn't just the violence in those images that captured the world's attention – it was the surreal juxtaposition of that violence with Pike's oddly casual body language and facial expression. 

Picture: Lalo Alcaraz/laloalcaraz.com

Photoshop out the students from that picture with your mind. Forget about Pike's uniform, let's say he's just wearing street clothes. Now, instead of a policeman spraying a less-lethal chemical weapon down the throats of peacefully seated 20-year-olds, you might be able to interpret this tableau as a figure sauntering through a garden, spraying weeds. Or maybe he's your paunchy, moustached uncle, nonchalantly dousing bugs in the basement with insecticide.

One way the internet deals with that kind of upsetting dissonance is to mock it. And that's what the internet has done with Pike. The "casually pepper-spraying cop" is now a meme, a kind of folk art or shared visual joke that is open to sharing and reinterpretation by anyone. This particular meme has spread with unusual velocity – in part, I imagine, because the subject matter is just as weird as it is upsetting.

Even Kamran Loghman, one of the men who developed pepper spray as a weapon with the FBI in the 1980s, had a hard time reconciling it. "I have never seen such an inappropriate and improper use of chemical agents," Loghman told the New York Times. And Loghman might add "insouciant" to that list of adjectives. I mean, look at the guy. He's not braced for imminent attack by a foe; he does not move with tension as if navigating a hostile environment. He's administering punishment, and his face says: "Meh."

An investigation, to be led by former NY and LA police chief Bill Bratton, into whether there was police misconduct may take a while to reach a conclusion, but Photoshop justice has been delivered to Pike. And the expressions keep multiplying.

You can find them at Boing Boing's "Occupy Lulz" post, at Know Your Meme, at a Facebook page and at Reddit.

Pike's dissonantly casual body language in the context of violence brings to mind the photos from Abu Ghraib; Lynndie England smiling and giving the camera a thumbs-up in front of tortured prisoners. And, in a fit of macabre recursion, some of the casually pepper-spraying cop meme images reference those very photos from Abu Ghraib. Lynndie and Pike, two "bad apples" taking the fall for systemic problems with the institutions each represent.

Violence is nothing new, of course, and there are plenty of classic art and history images in which to insert Pike. A print of American revolutionary war figure Crispus Attucks, Picasso's Guernica for instance.

Classic album covers like Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon and the Beatles' Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band get the treatment, too.

Pop culture and fine art images in which sympathetic figures are seated, supine or vulnerable are another frequently spotted base for Pike's shenanagins. Grandma at the holiday table is going to have some extra pepper on her turkey this Thanksgiving. Eeyore is not safe. Nor are the ladies of Seurat. And forget about the American constitution.

Still, none of us jaded internet chroniclers were prepared for the ultimate act of Inception-like recursion that came this week, when students at UC Davis printed out some of the meme images as posters, and carried them to a protest at the very site on the UC Davis quad where the pepper-spraying incident took place. Images of the casually-pepper-spray-everything-cop, held up as an act of protest on the same spot where Pike casually-pepper-sprayed-everyone. Good news: looks like there will be T-shirts for them to wear soon, too.

"casually butterfly everything"

Related Article:

Very powerful response ! These students are heroes and the hope of the future of America (Video)


US firm's teargas used against Tahrir Square protesters

Microblogs strengthen cultural ties between Chinese, foreigners

English.news.cn   2011-11-22

BEIJING, Nov. 22 (Xinhua) -- By using a Chinese microblog as a free advertising medium, the second China-Brazil Film Festival was able to pack filmgoers into northeast Beijing's Broadway Cinematheque MOMA -- a rare event for the art-house venue.

"Before the festival started, we opened an account on Weibo to advertise the event, and many of our followers came to watch these films," said Janaina Silveira, a public relations official for the event which included the screening of ten Brazilian films from Nov. 17 to 22.

The account Silveira mentioned, "Zhongguobaxidianyingjie" ("China-Brazil Film Festival"), attracted some 400 followers in about a month, including Chinese people involved in Brazil-related businesses and others learning Portuguese.

"We had volunteers answer questions about Brazilian culture posted by followers on our Weibo account, which to some extent met the curiosity of the Chinese audience," she said.

Silveira has not been the only one to realize the increasingly powerful influence of the country's popular microblog services over the last two years. While the microblog offers a channel for self-expression and networking, it has also evolved into a platform for advertising, government services, and news dissemination.

Jessica Beinecke from the United States has so far attracted about 170,000 followers, including many Chinese people learning English, with her Weibo account "OMGmeiyu."

Videos of her teaching English by speaking basic Mandarin Chinese and imitating Lady Gaga have been a breath of fresh air for language-learners who have sat through long periods of more traditional classes.

"I cannot help watching your video after I finished the first one. It is very enjoyable and I can learn English at the same time," a user named "Zhouxiaobiao" wrote.

Mark Rowswell, who is arguably the most famous foreigner in China, has about 900,000 followers to his Weibo account named for his household Chinese name "Dashan," which literally means "Big Mountain."

A self-proclaimed "Ambassador of Chinese and Foreign Culture," he posts Chinese-language entries and discusses the differences between Eastern and Western cultures with his massive following.

Rowswell usually compares Chinese and English from the perspective of a learner of a foreign language, and tells people the subtle differences between some words.

"You are a friendly culture disseminator and English expert," "Xiaoyuanye" wrote in an entry.

Figures show that the number of China's Internet users rose to 485 million by the end of June this year, and the number of registered microblog users surpassed 300 million.

"Foreigners use microblogs to spread their own cultures, and Chinese netizens can gain knowledge while strengthening friendships through direct communication with them. In this way, both sides benefit from the use of microblogs," said Zhan Xinhui, an associate professor with the Communication University of China.

According to Zhan, all individual participants are inevitably influenced by the viewpoints of the disseminators, and they, in turn, influence more people by forwarding these messages to their own circles.

"Cultural communication needs understanding and exchanges from both sides in order to be effective, and Chinese netizens can also play a positive role in spreading their own culture," Zhan said.

Editor: Xiong Tong

IBM Powers Data Centre in Bangalore, India Using Solar Energy

ITProPortal, by EricaThinesen, 21 November, 2011

Green living definitely does not refer to computer data centres, however, IBM is planning to install a 6,000 sq. foot array of solar panels positioned near Bangalore, India; this installation will be able to provide 575 volts to operate a single server.

The new solar power based system is capable of running the India based company's computer equipment of 50 kilowatts for around 330 days for 5 hours per day. This will also serve as an alternative source of power if Bangalore faces difficulty in supplying power to their customers, reports Z6 Mag.

In fact, it seems IBM can install batteries and store a good amount of power. With a larger array of solar panels and ample roof capacity, the company will be able to run a 24/7 data center on solar energy.

The outcome is that now remote places in the world can also be connected with the rest of the world using solar supplied energy source. Thus, IBM's initiative can be viewed as a ground breaking and innovative creation. Even though solar powered technology is around for many decades, it is still a relatively new source of energy for large corporations.

Censored: #occupywallstreet

RT.com, 18 November, 2011

Natalie Behring / Getty Images / AFP

Has Twitter acted to silence Occupy Wall Street? As a new generation of protesters relies on social media to get their message across, doubts are beginning to surface that the latest tool for popular revolution is firmly in corporate hands.

As OWS protestors gathered at intersections around Wall Street Thursday, their plans to stop traders from ringing the opening bell at the New York Stock Exchange was quickly thwarted by a heavy-handed police response.

With an estimated 400 arrested and demonstrators complaining of police brutality, the coordinated nationwide clampdown by local authorities is in full effect.

But amid the historic level of civic protest that has not been seen in the United States in a generation, many were wondering: “Why isn’t Occupy Wall Street trending on Twitter?”

Twitter: an instrument for change?

Twitter, the online social networking service that enables users to send and read text-based posts known as “tweets,” has long been touted as a tool helping grassroots organizers foment social and political change. During the contentious 2009 Iranian presidential elections, the US State Department reportedly worked with Twitter to help expand its access in Iran. In what would ultimately be dubbed the “Twitter Revolution,” activists relied heavily on Twitter and other social networking sites as they coordinated their activities against the ruling regime.

Washington was also said to have asked Twitter to delay maintenance plans so Iranian activists could communicate with each other.

Likewise, social media advocates heralded the dawn of a new age when the use of Twitter became instrumental in organizing revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt, ultimately igniting the Arab Spring in late 2010/early 2011.

Occupy Wall Street meanwhile, which started as a small spark in downtown New York on September 17, has since spread like wildfire around the world.  Having been largely ignored by the mainstream media, the protestors in the square-block Zuccotti Park, located in the heart of New York’s financial district, did what protestors in Egypt’s Tahrir Square did; they relied on social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook to coordinate their actions.

But what happened when the cyber utopians struck at the heart of an empire that Twitter itself is a part of?  That is a calculation that many Occupy Wall Street Protestors apparently did not make.

Trending and Hash tags:

• Hash tags or pound signs (#), a user created phenomenon, a user created phenomenon, are used to group conversations on Twitter. By grouping tweets together, users can create “memes”, ideas which spread from person to person within a culture.
• Now, if hash tags help pool together similar ideas, trends are the ultimate expression of this, where, with the simple click of the mouse, users can access the most popular topics from the 200 million tweets sent every single day. According to Twitter’s official website, trends “are automatically generated by an algorithm that attempts to identify topics that are being talked about more right now than they were previously.”
• Therefore, to trend, overall volume is not the only important factor. A massive spike of interest is also necessary to make something trend on Twitter’s homepage. For example, say #britneyspears gets 1 million tweets a day, every day, for months on end. Meanwhile, #occupywallstreet has a baseline of 10,000 tweets for the first half of September. If it then spiked to 990,000 on September 17, #Occupywallstreet should trend (assuming there are not several other larger spikes of volume) while #britneyspears would not.
• Basically regular figures do not trend, while massive increases do.

Twitter Remains Silent

Critics have argued that at the movement’s inception on September 17 and again on October 1, when some 700 OWS protestors were arrested on the Brooklyn Bridge, #occupywallstreet did not appear on the Twitter trending list.

According to some activists, on both September 17 and October 1, #occupywallstreet tweets were occurring in greater frequency than other top trending topics which appeared on Twitter’s homepage. So why did it not show up as a trend?

Sean Garnett, Twitter’s vice president of communications, claimed in a statement posted on quora.com that this most likely occurred because the public “don't have access to our trends algorithm and may not have access to the full firehose of tweets.” Others have counted misspellings and other variations of phrasing that could have lead to the phenomenon.

However, using Trendistic, a statistic-based trending analytic tool around, Jonathan Albright, a PhD. Researcher at the University of Auckland, said the data seems to contradict the primary arguments about how topics trend on Twitter – their relative newness, volume, and related spikes in interest.

First, Albright compared #occupywallstreet with two other topics that trended on October 1; #whatyoushouldknowaboutme and #october. Comparing the data, Albright discovered that #october had been on Twitter for much longer than #occupywallstreet and did not experience a dramatically greater peak in activity. Meanwhile, #whatyoushouldknowaboutme, which trended nearly all day, had a less dramatic peak in overall tweets than #occupywallstreet.

Meanwhile, Emily Chambliss from Attention, a global social media marketing agency, determined in her own statistical analysis:

"In the first week, average mentions per day were an unimpressive 18.8 mentions per day. Not many people were talking about Occupy Wall Street. After the start of occupation on 9/17 and up until 9/23, average mentions per day increased by a whopping 2,004 per cent. The following week had a 97 per cent increase over the week prior, and the week after the Brooklyn Bridge arrests saw a 216 per cent increase in average mentions per day."

So #occupywallstreet was relatively new, very hot, experienced great peaks in activity, but did not trend. Whatever the reason, it raises doubts about Twitter’s claim its automatically-generated algorithm “rewards discussions that are new to Twitter."

Twitter: a corporate tool

Many activists believe Twitter is working against Occupy Wall Street at the behest of corporate interests.

In March of 2011, Bloomberg news reported that JPMorgan Chase & Co., arguably the largest corporate bank in the world, “has invested in a fund that has bought about $400 million in Twitter Inc. shares.

With an estimated value of $4.5 billion dollars and one of the world’s major financial service providers heavily invested in it, Twitter might be a favorite tool of the “99 per cent”, but their interests obviously do not correspond with them.

In the end, Twitter might be more than happy to help the US government overthrow undesirable regimes in other parts of the world. But when it comes to giving voice to those who have decided to challenge a system of corporate greed and income inequality at home, silence might ultimately figure better into their bottom line.

Related Articles:

JPMorgan's Dimon's aggressive style may hurt bank cause

Richard Branson: 'Capitalism has lost its way'

Google, Facebook warn against new US piracy legislation

BBC News, 16 November 2011

Related Stories 

• Illegal game downloads 'up 20%'
• BT readies Newzbin piracy block
• Americans face piracy site blocks

Google chairman Eric Schmidt said SOPA
amounted to "censorship".

Web firms including Google and Facebook have written to the US government in opposition to a proposed bill to combat piracy.

Alongside AOL, Twitter and eBay they claim that the Stop Online Piracy Act poses huge risks to the internet.

SOPA, supported by the music and film industries, aims to give new powers to content providers to help them take offending sites offline.

The US House of Representatives is due to debate the bill on 16 November.

The law would allow content owners to seek court orders to force internet service providers, search engines, payment processors and ad networks to block or cease business with websites linked to online piracy.

Content industries around the world are looking for new ways to combat the growing problem of piracy.

Serious risk

In the US, critics warn that SOPA is unnecessarily draconian.

"Unfortunately, the bills as drafted would expose law-abiding US internet and technology companies to new uncertain liabilities, private rights of action, and technology mandates that would require monitoring of websites," Google, Facebook, Yahoo and eBay wrote in a letter to leaders of the House and Senate Judiciary committee.

"We are concerned that these measures pose a serious risk to our industry's continued track record of innovation and job creation, as well as to our nation's cybersecurity," the companies said. The letter was also signed by AOL, Twitter, LinkedIn, Mozilla and Zynga.

Speaking at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Sloan School of Management this week, Google chairman Eric Schmidt voiced his own opposition to SOPA.

"The solutions are draconian. There's a bill that would require ISPs to remove URLs from the web which is also known as censorship last time I checked," he said.

In the UK the Motion Picture Association recently won a court order against BT forcing the ISP to block access to Newzbin 2, a members-only site which aggregates links to illegal content. It is now seeking to extend the block to other ISPs.

Culture secretary Jeremy Hunt is considering whether to introduce even stricter measures in the upcoming Communications Act which, like SOPA, would target search engines, payment processors and advertising firms.

Rogue websites

The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), the Recording Industry Association of America and the US Chamber of Commerce are among the supporters of the legislation.

MPPA said that SOPA would allow the US Department of Justice "more effective tools to protect American intellectual property, including the films, television shows and sound recordings created by our members".

Judiciary Committee Chairman Lamar Smith, a Texas Republican who introduced the bill, said the legislation is designed to "stop the flow of revenue to rogue websites... that profit from selling pirated goods without any legal consequences".

But the legislation's "vague language" could have a knock-on effect to websites that allow users to share videos and post blogs, according to the Washington-based Center for Democracy and Technology.

It could mean legitimate sites are also blocked, it said.

Golden goose

Critics of SOPA have joined together to create a Censorship US day to coincide with the bill's debate.

On the Censorship US Day website, critics argue that the bill gives the content industries too much power over both the structure and content of the internet.

They are also highly critical of SOPA's counterpart - the Protect IP bill - which is currently being considered by the US Senate.

The bill aims to block sites linking to illegal content by having their domain names delisted from the internet's address books.

The bill also contains clauses that would force search engines to stop listing infringing sites in their indexes.

"These bills were written by the content industry without any input from the technology industry. And they are trying to fast track them through congress and into law without any negotiation with the technology industry." Said Fred Wilson of venture capitalist firm Union Square Ventures.

"The tech industry, led by startups, have created all the net new jobs in the past five years. Companies like Apple, Google, Facebook, and startups like Dropbox, Kickstarter, and Twilio are the leading exporters and job creators of this time. They are the golden goose of the economy and we cannot kill the golden goose to protect industries in decline," he added.

James Allworth, a fellow at Harvard Business School, said SOPA could stifle innovation.

"It contains provisions that will chill innovation. It contains provisions that will tinker with the fundamental fabric of the internet. It gives private corporations the power to censor. And best of all, it bypasses due legal process to do much of it," he said.

Coinciding with the debate about SOPA, a new survey looking at US attitudes to online copyright infringement suggests that, while piracy is widespread, most Americans are not hardcore pirates.

The report suggested that 70% of all 18-29-year-olds have pirated music, TV shows or movies. But it said that two-thirds of this subset also acquire content legally.

The research, conducted by the Princeton Survey Research Associates, was sponsored by thinktank The American Assembly and part-funded by Google.

Related Article:

Sopa condemned by web giants as 'internet blacklist bill'

Google: US law enforcement tried to get videos removed from YouTube

EU wants stricter control of censorship software

Facebook founder Zuckerberg tells G8 summit: don't regulate the web

'EG8' Internet conference discusses net neutrality

Google, Facebook warn on Internet rules at e-G8
What kind of Internet do you want?
Mark Thompson: BBC realised importance of internet in 1990s
Sarkozy opens 'historic' forum on future of internet in runup to G8

The Internet - The first Worldwide Tool of Unification ("The End of History")

" ... Now I give you something that few think about: What do you think the Internet is all about, historically? Citizens of all the countries on Earth can talk to one another without electronic borders. The young people of those nations can all see each other, talk to each other, and express opinions. No matter what the country does to suppress it, they're doing it anyway. They are putting together a network of consciousness, of oneness, a multicultural consciousness. It's here to stay. It's part of the new energy. The young people know it and are leading the way.

I gave you a prophecy more than 10 years ago. I told you there would come a day when "everyone could talk to everyone and, therefore, there could be no conspiracy." For conspiracy depends on separation and secrecy - something hiding in the dark that only a few know about. Seen the news lately? What is happening? Could it be that there is a new paradigm happening that seems to go against history? ... " Read More …. "The End of History"- Nov 20, 2010 (Kryon channeled by Lee Carroll)

"The New Paradigm of Reality" Part I/II – Feb 12, 2011 (Kryon channeled by Lee Carroll)

(Subjects: Egypt Uprising, Iran/Persia Uprising, Peace in Middle East without Israel actively involved, Muhammad, "Conceptual" Youth Revolution, "Conceptual" (without a manager hierarchy) managed Businesses, Internet, Social Media, News Media, Google, Bankers, Global Unity,..... etc.)