google

Yesterday's anti-SOPA blackout was effective:

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) withdrew as a co-sponsor of the Protect IP Act in the Senate, while Reps. Lee Terry (R-Neb.) and Ben Quayle (R-Ariz.) said they were pulling their names from the companion House bill, the Stop Online Piracy Act. Opponents of the legislation, led by large Internet companies, say its broad definitions could lead to censorship of online content and force some websites to shut down.

Google also says they received over 4.5 million signatures on their anti-SOPA petition yesterday.

This is democracy in action and the people have spoken. Will Patrick Leahy and Lamar Smith listen to the people? Most likely not as the donations they get from pro-SOPA industry speaks louder than the actual people, but hopefully enough of their colleagues will listen that this legislation never even sees a vote or suffers a horrible death on the floor.

In related news, Hollywood bigs are stopping donations to the Obama campaign because of his opposition to the legislation. Perhaps it's time to target these industries. A good way will be to stay away from the movie theaters and stop buying DVDs. Time to hit the fat-cats where it matters the most - in their wallets.

Here’s another great one from the queen of wingnut hypocrites, Michelle Malkin:

That’s in a post she did on AttackWatch, a new site launched by Obama for America to track smears.

So exactly what cookies are they using? Well they actually have quiet a few, which is common for most sites, but the biggest tracking cookie I saw comes from Google Analytics. That is also verified by looking at the source code on AttackWatch’s page:

<script type="text/javascript">var _gaq = _gaq || [];
_gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-30908-26']);
_gaq.push(['_trackPageview']);
(function() {
var ga = document.createElement('script');
 ga.type = 'text/javascript';
 ga.async = true;
ga.src = ('https:' == document.location.protocol ? 'https://ssl' : 'http://www') + '.google-analytics.com/ga.js';
var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga, s);})();

</script>

That right loads in the the tracking code from the Google Analytic service. This is a very popular service used by site owners to get ideas of how many visitors they have and even what pages are popular. I even use it on this page, as does Malkin herself:

<script src="http://www.google-analytics.com/urchin.js" type="text/javascript">

</script>

<script type="text/javascript">

_uacct = "UA-2595414-1";

urchinTracker();

</script>

Drudge is pushing a study by the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism, also being published by PBS:

The Drudge Report outranks social media when it comes to driving news traffic to top Web sites, according to a new study from the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism. In a comprehensive examination of online traffic data provided by Nielsen, Pew found that only "three sites ever account for more than 10 percent of the traffic to any [major news Web site]: Google (search and news combined), the Drudge Report and Yahoo (search and news combined)."

There is no arguing that Drudge has a very big influence on driving traffic, but that isn’t the purpose of Twitter and Facebook. Drudge’s content is 99.9% linking, while the number of external links on social sites generally make up a very small percentage. Comparing the two is really a falsity.

And guess what? It’s no “lefty activist”:

A female Kentucky Tea Party activist who wishes to remain anonymous has identified the man who wrestled a female MoveOn.org activist to the ground after the debate last night. In an email to me and copied to another Tea Party activist, she says that his name is Mike Pezzano. Here are two photos. The first is from the news footage last night of the incident and the second was obtained previously by the activist who sent me both these photos and identified him by name as Mike Pezzano. You can see his name on his name tag in the second photo.

Doing a quick Google, I found this profile on meetup.com. Looking at the info, it appears to be one and the same. Here’s a nice little tidbit:

Mike Pezzano Assistant Organizer of Kentucky Open Carry

Yeah because idiots like this really need an excuse to carry more guns.

UPDATE (4:55pm):

It turns out that the actual stomper was a volunteer on the Paul campaign and Paul even touted his endorsement in a full page ad today.

While going through my feeds in Google Reader this morning, one headline really, REALLY stuck out at me:

The “But Tour”? Oh I’m sure that the right will quickly paint this as more proof of the so-called “Liberal media” and their attempts to smear the good people of the right. CNN did actually correct the typo in the article, which now reads, “Tea Party Express reveals details of national bus tour”, but in readers like Google Reader, the headlines are cached and so they remain. None the less, I really needed a good laugh like this today.

It’s been three years since Viacom went after YouTube for the Viacom videos being on the site. Today a judge threw out the lawsuit:

Today, the court granted our motion for summary judgment in Viacom’s lawsuit with YouTube. This means that the court has decided that YouTube is protected by the safe harbor of the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA) against claims of copyright infringement. The decision follows established judicial consensus that online services like YouTube are protected when they work cooperatively with copyright holders to help them manage their rights online.

This is an important victory not just for us, but also for the billions of people around the world who use the web to communicate and share experiences with each other. We’re excited about this decision and look forward to renewing our focus on supporting the incredible variety of ideas and expression that billions of people post and watch on YouTube every day around the world.

In a nutshell the Judge said that there is a legal route for copyright owners to file their complaints with websites they feel are infringing upon their property and that they must follow that route. It doesn’t mean you can go and upload a Daily Show clip to YouTube. It means that if you do, then Viacom must send a takedown notice to YouTube and YouTube must investigate and comply.

For those interested in the full decision, here it is:

Msj Decision

So this morning I read this interesting article:

Republicans are stepping up their criticism of the Securities and Exchange Commission following reports that senior agency staffers spent hours surfing pornographic websites on government-issued computers while they were supposed to be policing the nation's financial system.

California Rep. Darrell Issa, the top Republican on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, said it was "disturbing that high-ranking officials within the SEC were spending more time looking at porn than taking action to help stave off the events that put our nation's economy on the brink of collapse."

He said in a statement Thursday that SEC officials "were preoccupied with other distractions" when they should have been overseeing the growing problems in the financial system.

Following reports? Well I do remember seeing something about those reports, but couldn’t remember when. Thankfully we have the power of the Google:

The Securities and Exchange Commission is taking a drubbing [1] these days for its abject failure?despite detailed tips [1]?to catch Bernie Madoff in what appears to be the biggest Ponzi scheme in our nation’s history.

Now, thanks to little-noticed report [2] from the agency’s inspector general, we have a detailed glimpse into other bad behavior by some SEC employees.

In the ongoing lawsuit Viacom has against Google/YouTube, today we get this interesting revelation:

For years, Viacom continuously and secretly uploaded its content to YouTube, even while publicly complaining about its presence there. It hired no fewer than 18 different marketing agencies to upload its content to the site. It deliberately "roughed up" the videos to make them look stolen or leaked. It opened YouTube accounts using phony email addresses. It even sent employees to Kinko's to upload clips from computers that couldn't be traced to Viacom. And in an effort to promote its own shows, as a matter of company policy Viacom routinely left up clips from shows that had been uploaded to YouTube by ordinary users. Executives as high up as the president of Comedy Central and the head of MTV Networks felt "very strongly" that clips from shows like The Daily Show and The Colbert Report should remain on YouTube.