Mashable:

The controversial SOPA bill is designed to combat online piracy and copyright violations. But now it turns out the bill’s author and main sponsor, Texas Rep. Lamar Smith, has some copyright problems of his own.

Vice’s Jamie Lee Curtis Taete did some investigative research into whether Smith’s own campaign site was copyright Kosher. The photographic agency which produced the images used on Smith’s current site told Taete it was “very difficult” for them to check if Smith has the rights to use those photos.

So Taete did some more digging, looking at older archived versions of Smith’s campaign website. One former version of the representative’s site used a picture of an idyllic backwoods scene which Taete traced to a photographer named DJ Schulte:

DJ Schulte said the photo was listed under Creative Commons and anyone could use it — provided they gave him due credit. But, according to Schulte, Smith’s campaign made no effort to do so anywhere on his site.

“I do not see anywhere on the screen capture that you have provided that the image was attributed to the source (me),” wrote Schulte on his Flickr page.

“So my conclusion would be that Lamar Smith’s organization did improperly use my image. So according to the SOPA bill, should it pass, maybe I could petition the court to take action against texansforlamarsmith.com.”

Rep. Smith’s campaign office was not immediately available for comment.

PROTECT IP Act Breaks The Internet from Fight for the Future on Vimeo.

I got this from slickdeals which I belong to.  Again, don’t let Congress muck up our liberties like they have our economy.

Today, the US House Judiciary Committee has a hearing on the Stop Online Piracy Act [wikipedia.org] or SOPA. The text of the bill is here [house.gov]. This bill would strengthen copyright holders’ means to go after allegedly infringing sites at detrimental cost to the freedom and integrity of the Internet. As a result, we are joining forces with organizations such as the EFF, Mozilla, Wikimedia, and the FSF for American Censorship Day [americancensorship.org].

Part of this act would undermine the safe harbor [wikipedia.org] provisions of the Digital Millenium Copyright Act [wikipedia.org] which would make sites like reddit, youtube and slickdeals liable for hosting user content that may be infringing. This act would also force search engines, DNS providers, and payment processors to cease all activities with allegedly infringing sites, in effect, walling off users from them.

It would, in effect, allow companies to bypass the judicial system and take down or block websites simply by accusing a user of posting just potentially infringing content on a website. That could be as little as posting on a forum and talking about product, posting a picture of you with a logo in it, or posting a video with music in the background, we just don’t know how far they will try to reach… but we do know that they already abuse the power and tools they have been given [arstechnica.com]

This bill sets a chilling precedent that endangers everyone’s right to freely express themselves and the future of the Internet. If you would like to voice your opinion to those in Washington, please consider writing your representative [house.gov] and the sponsors of this bill:

Lamar Smith (R-TX) [house.gov]
John Conyers (D-MI) [house.gov]
Bob Goodlatte (R-VA) [house.gov]
Howard L. Berman (D-CA) [house.gov]
Tim Griffin (R-AR) [house.gov]
Elton Gallegly (R-CA) [house.gov]
Theodore E. Deutch (D-FL) [house.gov]
Steve Chabot (R-OH) [house.gov]
Dennis Ross (R-FL) [house.gov]
Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) [house.gov]
Mary Bono Mack (R-CA) [house.gov]
Lee Terry (R-NE) [house.gov]
Adam B. Schiff (D-CA) [house.gov]
Mel Watt (D-NC) [house.gov]
John Carter (R-TX) [house.gov]
Karen Bass (D-CA) [house.gov]
Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL) [house.gov]
Peter King (R-NY) [house.gov]
Mark E. Amodei (R-NV) [house.gov]
Tom Marino (R-PA) [house.gov]
Alan Nunnelee (R-MS) [house.gov]
John Barrow (D-GA) [house.gov]
Steve Scalise (R-LA) [house.gov]
Ben Ray Luján (D-NM) [house.gov]
William L. Owens (D-NY) [house.gov]

*Thanks to reddit for some of the copy! Also, normally we dont sticky things like this to hot deals, but I felt it important enough to get the word out.

Speak Out Against SOPA: Send Congress A Physical Letter In Just A Few Clicks

The web community is currently in an apprehensive uproar over the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), which threatens to create an Internet blacklist that operates at the DNS level in a misguided attempt to curb piracy. It’s bad news— many of Silicon Valley’s largest tech companies are speaking out against it, and Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt just went on the record calling it draconian and censorship.

Now the folks over at SendWrite, a startup that makes it easy to quickly send people physical letters (no stamp-licking required), is offering to extend its services to anyone who would like to send their Congressperson a real, physical letter denouncing SOPA. Free of charge.

The service is easy to use: go to this page, select your congressperson from the drop-down menu, and fill in a personal message (it gives you a rough outline on what you should consider including, as well as some additional tips).

Enter your return address (you should provide a real one, or the Congressperson may not pay attention to it), and you’re set — SendWrite will print it out and send it. You’ll even see a preview of what your words will look like once they’re printed out on a card.

SendWrite is offsetting the costs of the campaign by prompting users to make donations.

Update: SendWrite has cut this off at 3,000 letters (which they’re in the process of sending).

We’ve received over 3000 thoughtful and personal letters telling congress to stop SOPA. We’ve also received thousands of dollars in donations. We are suprised by the response and support you’ve shown.

We’ve decided apply the brakes so we can ensure a high level of service for the cards we’ve already received. It’s going to take us a little time to process and mail all these letters, so please be patient. If you supplied us with your email address you will receive a notification when your card is mailed out.

If you haven’t had a chance to write congress, please head over to AmericanCensorship.org to take action.

Respectfully and sincerely,
Cole Krumbholz
Founder, SendWrite.com

I have owned it for over 6 months and service has been great. I am on the Beyond Talk plan which allows me to surf with no limits and get unlimited text messages too. This is the best plan out there for prepaid phones that I can find.

The LG Optimus V model has great functionality and if you sign up for Amazon’s daily free apps you will eventually get everything you want. i have downloaded over $200 worth of apps already. My only regret is I can’t keep all my apps on the phone.

I use my LG Optimus V android phone as a phone, an mp3 player, a GPS navigator, a texting gadget, both regular camera and video camera.  I sold my old virgin mobile phone, apple ipod touch,and  digital camera.  This phone has paid for itself in functionality, usage, and loads of free apps.

The Sony commercials are always cool. Check this out.

Product Features

• Android Honeycomb Operating System
• NVIDIA Tegra2 Processor
• Front and Rear Camera. Front 0.3 Megapixel. Rear 5.0 Megapixel
• Bluetooth Integrated Stereo
• Full-size SD Card slot (for media exchange only)

Processor, Memory, and Motherboard

• Hardware Platform: PC
• Processor: 1 GHz
• Number of Processors: 1
• RAM: 2 GB
• RAM Type: DDR2 SDRAM

Hard Drive

• Size: 16 GB
• Type: Serial ATA

Cases and Expandability

• Size (LWH): 9.5 inches, 6.8 inches, 0.3 inches
• Weight: 1 pounds

So there are only a handful of apps that I keep permanently on my phone. Even after I reset my phone to factory settings, I downloaded these two apps because they help me immensely.  The first one is Mr Number which blocks your calls as you specify it.  I used to have my phone pick up and hang up on all the blocked numbers but they keep calling so now I do have it set up to go automatically to voice mail.  I still get tons of telemarketing and robots calls.  I do have to go to my voicemail but I delete them through my magicjack phone to save my minutes.  Mr Number is a free app.

The second most useful app for me is the swift key app.  This is the best keyboard I have used and the predictive function gets better the more you use it.  This app is used whenever I text, type in google searches, or surf the web.  The swift key is a paid app but I highly recommend it.