Lamar Smith, the sponsor of SOPA, gets a message from the Internet. Crowdsourced from Reddit and beyond, a billboard was set up with a message for Rep. Lamar Smith of Texas. Find out what the message for Lamar Smith was after the break.

It is not worth clamping down on the internet in order to stop piracy. SOPA, CISPA, and PIPA are a few reasons why I feel this way.

Over the last few months, SOPA and PIPA have been trying to take control of the Internet. Although they were finally averted with mass protests, it must be noted that SOPA and PIPA were not the only bills threatening the Internet and its user-generated content.

US House of Representatives Member Lamar Smith has been found violating the bill he himself proposed, the SOPA. Smith used a photograph and did not follow the correct copyright procedures for using it. According to his bill, he must be jailed or penalized. Moreover, Smith has been found to be quite the charming ne’er do good when it comes to politics. Read on to find out.

Coach.com Hacked by UGNazi. Coach.com and Coachfactory.com hacked by UGNazi group. All Coach, UFC and Coachfactory.com are redirecting to ugnazi.com. UGNazi had earlier hacked UFC.com.

Uploaded.to not working in the US. Uploaded.to is blocking users from US with a message “Our service is currently unavailable in your country” in retaliation of the Megaupload shutdown.

If this anti-censorship opposition grows weak anytime, a censorship bill will be passed without doubt. Finally, Reddit and Y Combinator have decided that it is time to stop fighting the small battles and address the root cause.

The founder of Megaupload Kim Dotcom, along with three others was arrested at New Zealand, on request by US authorities. Megaupload was one of the 18 domains owned by Kim Dotcom and his company, and all of them were seized following raids on their three datacenters.

The MPAA has released a press release detailing how they believe that the Internet-wide protest against the SOPA and PIPA bills are corporate gimmicks to coerce the Government to drop the bills. This terrible and pathetically sad statement comes straight from the Chairman and CEO of the Motion Picture Association of America. Read on to find out more.

The scourges that are the United States’ two gagging Acts – the Stop Online Privacy Act (SOPA) and the PROTECT IP Act (PIPA) – are experiencing grave turmoil as large sections of the widely used Internet are blacking out for one day in protest against their draconian nature. The ongoing protest against the Bills intensified as Wikipedia, a veritable behemoth on the Internet, joined in the protest as we mentioned earlier. Following close on its heels is the giant community link aggregation website Reddit as well as the website of indie game maker Mojang, the creators of Minecraft. Many other gaming company heads joined together to stand against the draconian law’s enactment.

Wikimedia will be blacking out its English speaking websites tomorrow in protest of SOPA.

Both tech-giants and First Amendment advocates went all out against SOPA, and brought it down. In the midst of this, GoDaddy lost thousands of domains, Comcast issued a network upgrade rendering DNS blocking ineffective and Kaspersky withdrew support for SOPA.

Comcast has been one of the primary supporters of SOPA and this upgrade eliminates the possibility of DNS level blocking, something that SOPA was totally relying on for removing supposedly rouge websites.

The group of Internet companies opposing SOPA is not as capable and profit making as the lobbyists supporting it. Nonetheless, they have a direct interaction with the people and represent them better.

The new Partido Popular (People’s Party) government in Spain has passed the Sinde Law within two weeks of coming in power. This law will let copyright holders claim the takedown of a website, and the claim will be acted upon within ten days.