In a new blog post, Sandra Fulton, a member of the ACLU's Washington Legislative Office, describes the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement as the "biggest threat to free speech and intellectual property that you’ve never heard of." Fulton makes a good point because U.S. trade Representatives negotiating the treaty and other countries are doing a hell of a job keeping the details of this trade treaty a big secret.

In an editorial on Ars Technica internet advocacy group Free Press described the FCC's move to tax broadband as a way to fund broadband infrastructure growth in the U.S. as misguided. Free Press Research Director S. Derek Turner says that the proposed $1 - $5 tax on customers would ultimately be turned over to companies like AT&T who have been slowly pulling out of the broadband business anyway.

In the first few days after launch, Guild Wars 2 developer ArenaNet has had to ban a number of accounts for not following the rules related to offensive game names. That policy is laid out here in the "Guild Wars 2 Naming Policy" document, but some users apparently didn't get the memo and found themselves banned.

As many of our readers have learned by reading coverage on the antics and constant spin doctoring coming out of the hallowed halls of the United States Congress, the truth is often up for interpretation. Even National Public Radio Andrea Seabrook can't handle it anymore. After working for 14 years as a congressional correspondent at NPR, Seabrook couldn't take it anymore. She wondered if there was some way to break through the rhetoric and get the truth that her listeners needed to know about the culture and clashes of Washington.

A scathing editorial on Huffington Post from Craig Aaron, CEO and President of online rights advocacy group Free Press, calls AT&T out for its handling of the FaceTime app and for violating Net Neutrality rules. The editorial is in response to AT&T's restrictions on using Apple's FaceTime app for iOS devices, which Aaron calls a "clear violation of Net Neutrality."

A letter from various advocacy groups sent to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nevada) and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky) urge the leaders of the Senate to add the amendment offered by Al Franken (D-Minnesota) and Rand Paul (R-Kentucky) to the Cybersecurity Act of 2012. The Franken-Paul amendment would remove Section 701 from the bill. Section 701 gives corporations the authority to monitor the activity of internet users and use counter-measures against traffic they decide is engaged in "cyber threat" activity.

A federal judge has denied a motion by Electronic Arts to dismiss counter-claims in a trademark lawsuit filed by Textron Innovations and Bell Helicopter Textron related to helicopters depicted in its popular Battlefield games. Textron Innovations and Bell Helicopter Textron make the AH-1Z, UH-1Y and V-22 helicopters. They filed a lawsuit in 2008 claiming that the game's depiction of these helicopters infringed on Bell-manufactured vehicles in the "Battlefield Vietnam," "Battlefield Vietnam: Redux" and "Battlefield 2" video games.

Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom has launched a song online attacking U.S. President Barack Obama and urging supporters not to vote for him in November. The song and video on YouTube is called "Mr President" and offers dire warnings to U.S. voters about the President such as "don't vote for those who would take us back in time."

In another line from the song he says"what about free speech Mr President, what happened to change Mr President." 

In the rest of the world websites can go dark, post commentary, or engage in various forms of protests to let governments and corporations know how they feel about a particular issue.

Way back in June we detailed the trouble Anita Sarkeesian ran into after launching a Kickstarter for a video series called "Tropes vs. Women in Video Games." Despite the negative and frankly inappropriate feedback to the Kickstarter, the project generated $158,922 in funding. The original goal was $6,000.

We hit a milestone this week - our 10th episode of the show (although we could argue that it is actually the 11th or 12 episode of the show if you count the lost episodes we determined to be not suitable for public consumption)! This week Andrew Eisen and E. Zachary Knight talk about patent wars, the European Court's ruling that digital games can be resold, Verizon's claim that net neutrality violates its first amendment rights, the controversy over Blizzard banning some Linux-using Diablo III players, and a whole lot of other interesting topics.

In the old days, Supreme Court Justices had very little information to turn to outside of legal briefs presented by combatants and case law when making a ruling, but a new study by William & Mary law professor Allison Orr Larsen finds that justice are increasingly turning to information on the Internet to shore up their opinions. According to research from Larsen, there were more than 100 instances where justices used information on the Internet in their opinions.

Steven Davis dropped us a note informing us of a trailer that, he claims, he made for "some Hollywood producers" who asked him to make a movie trailer mock-up of Namco Bandai's classic arcade game Dig Dug. He calls the film "a fan made trailer" and lists all the materials he used to piece it together. The movie borrows scenes from such films as The Core, Tekken, Reign of Fire, 9, Monsters Vs.

Normally we would ignore what's going on at Twitter (not because we don't care but because the daily machinations of the service have no bearing within these pages), but a change in policy is of particular interest - mainly in how it might relate to current and future cybersecurity bills - like CISPA, PROTECT IT, and the Cybersecurity Act of 2012. Like Google, Twitter has decided to disclose how often the U.S. government asks for information on a user or issues a DMCA takedown via what they call a new "transparency tool."

In an age where acronyms such as SOPA, PIPA, ACTA, CISPA, CSA, and more put fear into the hearts of Internet users all over the globe it's time that someone stand up and clearly define what rights we should have on the Internet. Like the Continental Congress did when America declared Independence way back in 1776, the Entertainment Consumers Association (ECA) and other advocacy groups have come up with our own version of a "Declaration" for the Internet age.

If you are reading the web, playing a Facebook game, or watching a YouTube video, you could be violating the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act of 1984 - at least according to the way the Justice Department has interpreted it in several recent cases. The law was originally passed to protect government computer systems and financial databases from hackers, but amendments and new interpretations by federal prosecutors have taken a well defined law into broad interpretation.

On behalf of everyone here at GamePolitics we wish our readers a safe and happy holiday. We hope you are enjoying your extended weekend (assuming you had an extended weekend and didn't have to work for the "man" today) and are out having fun on the unofficial start of summer.

I won't rehash it here, but if you want a detailed explanation of what Memorial Day is all about and why it is a very important holiday to a majority of Americans, then you should check out usmemorialday.org.

What a difference a few days makes for a politician with an "unconventional" idea. After getting a little pushback from constituents, New York State Assemblyman Dean Murray (R) issued a statement trying to clarify the intended purpose of his billing to deal with anonymous Internet comments. One could categorize his statement as more of a walk back than a clarification...

A New York State Assemblymen wants to fight cyberbullying and “baseless political attacks" with a new bill that would ban anonymous web posts. The bill would make it so that all New York-based websites have to "remove any comments posted on his or her website by an anonymous poster unless such anonymous poster agrees to attach his or her name to the post," according to Wired's Threat Level.

Over at Business Insider, The DL Show host and new media advocate David Seaman offers four things you can do right now to fight against the "legislative nightmare" that is CISPA. 

Google co-founder Sergey Brin shared his "growing concern" with UK newspaper The Guardian over what he calls "very powerful forces" trying to restrict freedom on the internet. In an interview with the newspaper, Brin said that the efforts by governments and companies such as Facebook and Apple to control online activity are "scary."

The Department of Homeland Security and the U.S. Navy have launched a new research initiative that will find new ways to let the government gain access to information stored on home console systems like the Xbox 360 and PS3.

A new bipartisan bill wants to combat online bullying but is so poorly defined in its wording that it goes too far, according to some critics. The legislation is co-sponsored by Arizona State Reps. Ted Vogt and Vic Williams, both Republicans representing Tucson, along with strong support from House Minority Leader Chad Campbell (D-Phoenix), Assistant House Minority Leader Steve Farley (D-Tucson) and Rep. Terri Proud (R-Tucson).

The Washington Times has an opinion piece that takes a shot at German Chancellor Angela Merkel's administration over what they are calling a proposed "Drudge Tax." The reference is to conservative Matt Drudge's popular web site The Drudge Report, which aggregates news from all over the web. While the flavor of The Drudge Report may not sit well with many, the concern with a new proposal being pushed by Merkel's administration is that it will levy taxes on web sites that aggregate content.

Spain passed the anti-piracy "Sinde Law" late last year, and with it going into effect this week opponents of the law (that allows for the government to block allegedly infringing sites based on complaints from copyright holders), are mobilized to cause confusion to its enforcers. The group Hackivistas and artist Eme Navarro (a staunch critic of the law and a member of the music rights group SGAE) have come up with a unique way of protesting that will test how the new law is used.

Internet advocacy group Public Knowledge has launched a new web site called The Internet Blueprint. The goal of this new hub is to develop bills that will strengthen internet laws and ultimately make the internet a better place. The site is the group's response to lawmakers in Washington who asked Public Knowledge for input on how to improve the Internet.

Red 5 Studios, makers of the upcoming MMO shooter Firefall, have come out strongly against SOPA and PIPA, and plan to go dark for one day on January 18 to protest. The company also announced that, because of the Entertainment Software Association’s support for the bills, it has canceled its E3 booth and plans to skip the show. The shutdown will include all of its websites, its community sites for the game, and the Firefall beta.

Markus "Notch" Persson, Minecraft creator and co-founder of Mojang, added his two cents to the Stop Online Piracy argument today. When asked by PC Gamer about the bill before the House of Representatives, Notch said that a person would have to be crazy to support it.

League of Legends developer Riot Games let us know that they, have officially announced their opposition to controversial legislation under consideration in Congress: the U.S. House of Representatives’ Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Senate’s PROTECT IP Act (PIPA). The company's CEO, Brandon Beck, took to the official forums for the game (which has 11-million-players, for the record) to say that these two bills in their present form are unacceptable:

The Electronic Frontier Foundation is taking up arms against the PROTECT IP Act in the Senate and the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in the House and they want your help to do it. The advocacy that supports internet rights and freedom of speech online says that these new bills are "a threatening sequel to last year's COICA Internet censorship bill" and that this legislation "invites Internet security risks, threatens online speech, and hampers Internet innovation."