Companies and their employees at times face the difficult issue of protecting themselves from cybersmears by anonymous Internet users.

The bill would carve out huge exemptions to bedrock privacy law and allow companies to share private user data with the government without any judicial oversight. The result?

A Virtual Private Server can work well to set up your own anonymous internet browsing proxy. A VPS can cost as little as $8 a month, which is roughly the same a private proxy or VPN provider would charge you.

"The Free Software Foundation has announced that it has established an Expert Witness Defense Fund to assist defendants in RIAA cases, in order "to help provide computer expert witnesses to combat RIAA's ongoing lawsuits, and to defend against the RIAA's attempt to redefine copyright law."

Contributions to the Fund are tax deductible and may be made at the following URL...

"The University of Oregon (my alma mater, coincidentally) is believed to be the first US educational institution to refuse an RIAA demand to hand over the names of students alleged to have illegally downloaded music..."

RMS: « The RIAA is using a fraudulent accusation to threaten the main lawyer that defends the RIAA's victims. »

Slashdot had this scoop, posted by xseedit: "The RIAA has moved their main Web site www.riaa.com from IIS on Win2003 to Apache 2.2.3 on Red Hat. It appears that the move did not go smoothly as it resulted in an 8-hour downtime starting yesterday around noon, according to Netcraft. And the RIAA is still showing a 'temporarily under construction' page."

"In one of RIAA’s high profile cases the Free Software Foundation backed defendant Joel Tenenbaum, much to the dislike of the music industry lobby. John Sullivan, Operations Manager at the FSF explains in a guest post why they think these cases impact not just music, but also free software and its technology..."

It is particularly troublesome because the laws designed to protect the private data of consumers from government access are insufficient and out-of-date — creating a perfect storm for government abuse.