Craigslist has added a section to its About Page dedicated to fighting against the Stop Online Piracy Action and Protect IP Act worth taking a look at. The page offers an exhaustive list of resources and points out efforts from the ECA, EFF, OpenCongress, and more. It also features its opposition prominently on its front page. The page also includes a rant which calls out Monster Cable as just one example of why it opposes both SOPA and PIPA:

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:

Forbes has an excellent editorial up about the ESA's support of the Stop Online Piracy Act that does a great job of explaining - in simple English - how it could affect every day web sites who might not necessarily be engaged in anything but providing content.

Professional game players organization Major League Gaming clearly is against the Stop Online Piracy Act and has made a move to show its disdain for the bill by removing one hundred domains from GoDaddy's care. The company announced yesterday that it will not align itself with companies that support the House anti-piracy bill.

A TechieBuzz report points out an interesting fact about GoDaddy's initial support of SOPA; that it may have been done as a way to deal with some problems related to some pending legal action against the company by some major Hollywood trade organizations. The report suggests that GoDaddy might have supported the bill to gain immunity from a court-case against the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS).

Anti-virus and security software maker Kaspersky is not happy with the Business Software Alliance's early support of SOPA and Protect IP in the U.S. Even though the BSA later walked back its support of SOPA, the Russian firm has had enough. It announced that it plans to leave the BSA over its support for SOPA. Kaspersky has announced that on January 1st 2012 it will withdraw its membership of the BSA.

 Internet users are wary of the U.S. House's Stop Online Piracy Act and the Senate's PROTECT IP Act, and are already thinking of ways to get off the Internet the government hopes to to control very soon. One such movement came to fruition on Reddit, where outraged users decided that they needed to come up with some solutions.

The latest episode of The Jimquisition on The Escapist tackles Sony, EA and Nintendo's involvement in SOPA and Protect IP - two bills that propose doing horrible things in the name of protecting intellectual property rights, fighting piracy and killing the illicit counterfeit goods markets on the Internet.

Here's the lead in from irrepressible Destructoid editor Jim Sterling - or his The Escapist handlers (we're not sure which):

Overclock.net has gathered an avalanche of stories related to how Battlefield 3 and Origin are being received in Germany (thanks to Solarian for tip). The short answer is that Germans seem to hate it because of the company's terms of service and what Origin is doing on people's PCs.

On Wednesday Lawmakers in the United States introduced "The Stop Online Piracy Act," a bill that would give the government the ability to block web sites in the United States and abroad who traffic in counterfeit goods, illegal software, and other copyrighted goods.

Legal expert Arthur Miller will moderate a discussion on privacy and free speech in the age of mass media on October 29. Miller will lead PBS’ Jim Lehrer, Washington Post Company Chairman and CEO Donald Graham, Chief Judge David Sentelle of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit and Williams & Connolly partner Kevin Baine, among others, in a debate about how technology is challenging traditional notions of privacy in the media. The special event is put together for Concord Law School.

Rick Falkvinge, founder of the Swedish and first Pirate Party, stops by TorrentFreak to offers his opinions on digital rights management. As you can probably guess, he thinks DRM should go the way of the dodo. Falkvinge starts by saying that after the European Greens’ adoption of his party's position on DRM, he has been getting a lot of questions about why DRM should be banned. He lays out his first point with the following:

The Entertainment Consumer Association (ECA) has issued an alert concerning a proposal before the Madison (Wisconsin) City Council that would force second-hand resellers to out sellers personal information in a database that local police would have access to. Obviously this is not a good idea - even in the name of tracking down criminals who steal and receive various goods - usually to fuel some type of addiction. The ECA's letter to members follows:

Sony has hired a heavyweight in its ongoing fight to protect its online game services from hackers. The company has hired Philip Reitinger, former director of the U.S. National Cyber Security Center, as its new chief information security officer.

Another day, another Sony-related web site gets hacked, according to the BBC. Hackers have managed to breach the security of Sony Ericsson Canada's online store, reportedly stealing users' personal data such as e-mails, passwords and telephone numbers. Sony has confirmed that this information has been stolen, but no credit card information was compromised.

Sony-related sites around the world have become the preferred target of hackers this this week; yesterday the website of the company's Greek music division was hacked and the personal information of about 8,500 customers was stolen. A company spokesman told the BBC earlier this week that Sony's Music Entertainment website in Indonesia and Sony's Thailand website were also hacked, though no data had been stolen in those cases.

No hacking groups have claimed responsibility for compromising these four sites.

Nintendo's Club Nintendo has revised its privacy policy related to online access via its new 3DS hand-held. Nintendo is asking users via an email circulated today to accept a brand new privacy policy that lets it share personal member information with Nintendo Japan. Members must accept the new terms by May 31 or face losing their accounts. There is apparently no way to opt out of these new terms. From the web site:

"The amendment of the Club Nintendo privacy policy was necessary due to the launch of the new Nintendo 3DS system which offers a broad variety of network services. As you can link your Club Nintendo account to your Nintendo 3DS system, we adjusted the existing privacy policy to reflect and explain this.

Was the PlayStation Network hacked? Sony says that an external force brought the network down somehow but has yet to elaborate on exactly what happened. But the one thing it has not talked about is what personal data might have been stolen by those that infiltrated the system last week.

Satoshi Fukuoka, a spokesman for Sony Computer Entertainment in Tokyo, told PC World that it has not determined if "personal information or credit card numbers of users" has been stolen.

Sony Computer Entertainment of America spokesman Patrick Seybold echoed Fukuoka's statement, confirming that its parent company is looking into whether personal data was stolen during the "external intrusion."

Senators John Kerry (D-Mass.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.) this week introduced the "Commercial Privacy Bill of Rights Act of 2011," which they claim will establish a "baseline code of conduct" for how personal information is used, stored and distributed online.

"Americans have a right to decide how their information is collected, used, and distributed and businesses deserve the certainty that comes with clear guidelines," said Sen. Kerry in a statement about the new bill. "Our bill makes fair information practices the rules of the road, gives Americans the assurance that their personal information is secure, and allows our information driven economy to continue to thrive in today's global market."

The bill gives consumers notice of data collection and opt-out capabilities, while requiring companies collecting the information to provide adequate security and set limits on distribution.

U.S. retailer GameStop has been targeted by a class action lawsuit alleging it obtained and recorded personal information about its customers without their express consent. The main plaintiff in the case is Melissa Arechiga of Alameda County California. Her attorneys allege that GameStop illegally recorded her name, credit card number, and personal identification information (PII) following a shop purchase. The thrust of the lawsuit is that GameSpot regularly uses PII from customers to derive additional personal information, including residential addresses.

"Such conduct is performed intentionally and without the knowledge or consent of the cardholder, and is of potentially great benefit to [GameStop]," reads the suit.

According to a C|Net report, the Obama administration has drafted a new set of proposals to deal with intellectual property infringement online that it plans to send to the U.S. Congress very soon. The administration is also applauding  the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), which it says will "aid right-holders and the U.S. government to combat infringement" once it enters into effect.

As the C|Net report notes, the 92-page report penned by intellectual property enforcement coordinator Victoria Espinel reads as if it was ghost-written by lobbyists groups. There is some interesting data in there like the fact that the number of FBI and Homeland Security infringement investigations jumped 40 percent from 2009 to 2010, praise for ACTA, and details on various law enforcement operations.

Correction: The U.S. Commerce Department contacted us to let us know that the national I.D. program is completely voluntary. In our earlier report we erroneously reported that it was not a voluntary program. Our original wording was "The Internet I.D. would give every American a unique online identity overseen by the Commerce Department."

According to the public affairs officer for the Commerce Department, "Every American will not need an ID and private organizations or others that conduct online transactions would opt in to a system that is led by private industry in partnership with federal agencies like DOC."

Details on what the program consist of can be found at www.nist.gov/nstic.

An analysis by the Wall Street Journal of the stolen user data from Gawker media proves that many users don't take password security very seriously. At all. That data was swiped over the weekend by a hacking group called "Gnosis," who managed to gain access to e-mail addresses and passwords of more than a million Gawker users.

The Federal Trade Commission says that it wants Internet companies such as Facebook and Google to craft their own solutions to privacy problems, but if they are not capable the agency is ready to do it for them, says its chairman. FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz applauded Microsoft for exploring ways to incorporate the agency's recent suggestion for a "Do Not Track" function allowing consumers to opt out of Web tracking.

However, Leibowitz also said that the FTC is not afraid to use its voice and power to publicly shame companies that do not want to allow this functionality to their users.

"The other part of the bully pulpit is — and the commission is not in this position yet — is we can go and call for legislation. And I think many of the companies who want to do the right thing ... would prefer to do it voluntarily," Leibowitz said to POLITICO during a taping of C-SPAN’s "The Communicators."

According to Boing Boing, 115 leaked diplomatic cables from the latest Wikileaks document dump were related to the upcoming intellectual property law in Spain.

El Pais, a Spanish newspaper that has all of the 115 documents from the US Embassy in Madrid, has released 35 of them. The first batch of documents confirms what has been widely believed to be true: that the U.S. trade representative (working in conjunction with U.S. trade groups) wrote the country's upcoming copyright/Internet law.

Spain's new copyright law is being put to a vote this month. Boing Boing has some text in Spanish released from El Pais. Admittedly, trying to translate it via various online services (I’m looking at you Google), doesn't do the text justice.

Ars Technica reports that the Federal Trade Commission has released a report (PDF) that urges social networks to offer an "opt out" on behaviorial advertising. The "Opt Out" would serve users much like the "Do Not Call" list aids telephone customers.. at least in theory. The difference between the "Do Not Call" list and an Opt Out option on social networks is that the social network owners would have to provide the option on-site. This proposed list, according to Ars Technica, would be maintained via cookies. A sliver of the report:

Facebook is not the only social network having trouble balancing privacy with advertising efforts. According to a Wall Street Journal report, MySpace and some of its popular applications have been transmitting data to outside advertising companies that could be used to identify users.

A WSJ investigation found that information was being transmitted by MySpace when users clicked on ads. The website had pledged in the past to end the practice of sending personal data when users click on ads after a previous WSJ report in May. A MySpace spokesman told the paper that the data identifies the user profile being viewed but not necessarily the person who clicked on the ad.

The WSJ investigation also found that some MySpace applications were transmitting user IDs. Those apps included BitRhymes' TagMe, WonderHill's GreenSpot - a gardening game with 1.8 million users; and RockYou's RockYou Pets, a game with 6.1 million users.

We already know that some Facebook apps may have been giving user data to advertisers, but a report in the UK-based Daily Mail suggests that the world's largest social networking site might be outing its gay members through advertiser actions.

A team of researchers from Microsoft and Germany's Max Planck Institute ran a Facebook experiment by creating six fake profiles: two straight men, two straight women, a gay man, and a lesbian. The goal was to see if Facebook targeted ads based on sexuality. Besides the sexual orientation angle, the profiles were completely the same. The team monitored the accounts for a week.

Surprise, surprise. Zynga, makers of the popular Mafia Wars and Farmville Facebook games, is the target of a new class action lawsuit filed in a San Francisco federal court this week. The principal plaintiff, Nancy Graf of St. Paul, Minn., alleges in the lawsuit (filed with the help of law firm Edelson McGuire LLC) that Zynga shared the private data of its 218 million users with advertisers. The lawsuit seeks monetary relief for those whose data was shared, and "injunctive relief to prevent continued privacy abuses."

An article in the Wall Street Journal earlier in the week claimed that multiple Facebook applications were sharing user data with third-party companies including advertisers and marketers.

For its part, Zynga says that the lawsuit is "without merit" and plans to defend itself vigorously in court. The law firm representing the class group said that this case is just another example of an online company failing to protect user data.

A “game” that consists of the general public using the Internet to monitor closed circuit TV feeds for criminal activity has launched in the UK.

It was just about a year ago that we first reported on the venture, named Internet Eyes, which will charge store owners £20 per week, or £1,000 a year to connect their CCTV feeds to the website. The Internet Eyes user who “has made the best contribution to the prevention or detection of a crime,” will receive a monthly award of £1000.

The Daily Mail provided a little further detail on how Internet Eyes works: users will have access to four screens at a time. When they view what may be a crime taking place, they hit the website’s “alert” button and a text and photo are dispatched to the manager or owner of the store suspected of being robbed or victimized.

UK service provider British Telecom and anti-piracy law firm ACS:Law may find themselves in some serious trouble. The BBC reports that BT and the law firm may have breached the Data Protection Act. The law requires that data holders keep personal user information secure at "all times."

Un-encrypted Excel documents were sent in August by BT lawyer Prakash Mistry to Andrew Crossley of ACS:Law. The document was sent in compliance with a court order to turn over names of suspected file-sharers. While BT requested that the personal information be kept securely by ACS:Law, the company sent two un-encrypted documents via email. One document contained information on 413 users suspected of sharing the song "Evacuate the Dance Floor" and the other document contained 130 users who were suspected of sharing pornography - obviously of a commercial nature.