Tech News - The Week's Biggest Stories

The End of SOPA and PIPA



It was a ground breaking week of online protests but we did it. The Stop Online Piracy Act & the Protect IP act have been shelved. The anti piracy acts which were seen by many as a law against free speech were opposed by a whole host of online heavyhitters including Wikipedia, Google, Facebook, AOL & Ebay. Wednesday was the internet went black and on Friday the bills were shelved as the opposition was too great. GOP candidates spoke out against the bill as the cause went mainstream. Before Wednesday most non tech geeks knew nothing about SOPA/PIPA but the biggest online protest in history changed all that. So well done to everyone who took part in the blackout, contacted their local senator and to those who tweeted their disapproval of the bills. The internet is back in the hands of us - the people.

Google to Shut Down Picnik

From April this year Piknik will be no more. Google is to shut down the photo editing site on April 19 with plans in the pipeline to move it to Google+ at some point. This decision will prove unpopular to the millions of users of the site.  As a parting gift all Picnik users will be able to use the site's premium features free of charge. As a Photoshop owner the loss of Picnik will not effect me at all but will you miss it?

The Death of Megaupload

File sharing site Megaupload has been shut down by US authoritied and 7 people from the company have been indicted on charges. Although not an American owned site Megauploads servers were located in the US giving American authorities the ability to shut it down. It is one of the biggest site shut downs ever with daily visitors reaching 50 million and more than 180 million registered users. Hacking group Anonymous has targeted websites for the Dept of justice in protest at the shutdown. It seems the American government don't need the SOPA/PIPA acts to shut down sites that house pirated content.

Dreamhost Hacked

This is a story that makes me glad I moved my hosting from Dreamhost to Hostgator.
Dreamhost has been hacked. It is not yet known whether customer passwords or details were compromised but we do now unauthorised activity was detected within one of their databases. All DH customers are now required to reset their ftp passwords.