The internet chapter of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, a secret copyright treaty whose text Obama’s administration refused to disclose due to “national security” concerns, has leaked. It’s bad. It says:

Originally posted by Cory Doctorow

Boingboing.com
November 4, 2009

The internet chapter of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, a secret copyright treaty whose text Obama’s administration refused to disclose due to “national security” concerns, has leaked. It’s bad. It says:

* That ISPs have to proactively police copyright on user-contributed material. This means that it will be impossible to run a service like Flickr or YouTube or Blogger, since hiring enough lawyers to ensure that the mountain of material uploaded every second isn’t infringing will exceed any hope of profitability.

* That ISPs have to cut off the Internet access of accused copyright infringers or face liability. This means that your entire family could be denied to the internet — and hence to civic participation, health information, education, communications, and their means of earning a living — if one member is accused of copyright infringement, without access to a trial or counsel.

* That the whole world must adopt US-style “notice-and-takedown” rules that require ISPs to remove any material that is accused — again, without evidence or trial — of infringing copyright. This has proved a disaster in the US and other countries, where it provides an easy means of censoring material, just by accusing it of infringing copyright.

* Mandatory prohibitions on breaking DRM, even if doing so for a lawful purpose (e.g., to make a work available to disabled people; for archival preservation; because you own the copyrighted work that is locked up with DRM)

More details: The ACTA Internet Chapter: Putting the Pieces Together

Surviving Daylight Saving Switch

SUNDAY, March 2, 2008 -- Planning ahead and following a few simple steps can help you minimize the impact of lost sleep when the clocks go ahead one hour on March 9, says the American Academy of Sleep Medicine.

The academy offers the following tips to cope with the return to Daylight Saving Time (DST):

• Begin to readjust your sleep schedule a few days prior to the time change by going to bed an hour earlier.
• Modify your eating schedule by having dinner one hour earlier.
• Be careful when driving or operating machinery on the day of the time change.
• Avoid napping, particularly before bedtime.
• Keep a light schedule -- such as minimizing driving and avoiding strenuous physical activity -- on the Monday after the time change.
• Eat properly, stay hydrated and remain physically active.

"The conversion to DST, with its forced loss of one hour of sleep and a change in sleep schedule, can sometimes result in complaints of disrupted daytime functioning," Dr. Ron Kramer, medical director of the Colorado Sleep Disorders Center, said in a prepared statement. "This problem, surprisingly, can last as long as one to two weeks in some people, especially in the 'night-owl' type of person."

But he added that the change can be a good opportunity to examine your sleep patterns and behaviors.

The National Sleep Foundation has more about sleep.

What Happened at RegisterFly and How to Protect Your Domains

By Ross Dunn (c) 2007

On March 16th, 2007, the International Corporation for Assigned Names & Numbers (ICANN) publicly de-accredited the domain registrar RegisterFly.com for fundamental contractual breaches. BusinessWeek Online appropriately called the RegisterFly.com debacle a "Train wreck" and although this is not SEO-related I think StepForth SEO Blog readers should be kept in the know about this situation. Perhaps this post will help you protect your domain(s) and ultimately your livelihoods from future train wrecks. To that end, I have outlined some tips at the end of this post that will serve as a checklist to help protect you.

So What Happened at RegisterFly.com?

Near as I can tell it all began when the owners of the company began a power struggle that ultimately eroded customer support to appalling levels. As a result, customers were not able to transfer or renew their domains and in some cases personal information on their domains were even switched to reflect RegisterFly ownership.

Here is a comment from the BusinessWeek article that speaks volumes of the bad will well-earned by RegisterFly.com:

"This has been a travesty. The transfer system was designed to work between two trusted registrars and completely breaks down when one has gone bad. RegisterFly has held customers hostage by not providing the "auth codes," by arbitrarily locking domain names, by changing the "Whois" info, and by arbitrarily putting your domain into "ProtectFly", their service to protect your identity but also keeps you from transferring your name.

We have lost domains and, more importantly, production Web sites have just gone dead, heading to a RegisterFly parking page instead. Try explaining this to customers depending on these sites for their business. RegisterFly's debacle has ruined businesses and lives. And this could have all been avoided with a better process in place and more in-depth criteria for accreditation. This process must be improved before the Internet can truly be used for mission-critical applications."

What Has ICANN Done to Help?

The International Corporation for Assigned Names & Numbers (ICANN) came under severe criticism as a result of RegisterFly.com's actions because affected domain owners were frustrated ICANN took so long to act. Unfortunately it appears that the domain registration system has some serious flaws because ICANN, which is the only authoritative body in charge of domains, had little power to wield. Here is a March 7th excerpt from the ICANN Ombudsman Blog that provides some insight into ICANN's efforts:

"ICANN is not a regulator. We rely mainly on contract law. We do not condone in any way whatsoever RegisterFly's business practice and behavior.

The options for customers to transfer their names to another registrar at this stage are limited. We will advise if we have more information on this point. Last Friday, ICANN convened a telephone conference among those needed to implement a plan that will help cease unintended deletions. This will prevent names from being deleted from the registry and becoming available for re-registration by others. RegisterFly has assured us (for what that is worth) that they will process such requests as soon as they are again technically operational. We will keep a close eye on this.

We do hope this information is helpful and provides some small level of comfort in what is clearly a stressful time for registrants and others affected by these events. Check in at both here and at our website www.icann.org where these issues (amongst others) are being discussed."

For what it is worth, ICANN's 16th of March posting announcing the de-accreditation of RegisterFly also indicated that "ICANN intends to hold a forum to discuss the reform of the Accreditation policy and process at its Lisbon meeting in a week's time." What will come of this meeting is uncertain but there is no doubt that ICANN needs a far larger stick to wield at future companies like RegisterFly.

Protecting Your Domains

Big thanks to jtara's post at WebmasterWorld for some of these points:

1. Do your due diligence and check on the reputations of your prospective registrar before registering domains with them. Try searching with their name followed by "complaint" or any other related words and see if you find anything alarming. Most large registrars will have a complaint or two which is understandable but definitely go the other way if you see too many or if, in the worst case scenario, you see a movement such as www.registerflies.com
2. Do NOT host your website with your registrar or use their DNS records because any downtime on their part may turn your website into a 404.
3. Be careful registering your domain with a hosting company. Just like a registrar, a hosting company can leave you in hot water if it goes South. Generally hosting companies are just resellers of domains so all is not lost; with some effort you may be able to skirt around the hosting company and contact the core domain registrar.
4. If you must make your whois information private then use a 3rd party privacy service - one that is not directly affiliated with your registrar. This way you can be reasonably sure that your privacy options are under your control only.
5. Do NOT allow your registrar or hosting company to have any stake in your domain whois records. For example, making a hostíng company contact the Admin of your domain opens you up to potential problems.
6. Make certain your whois information is accurate so you can be contacted should complications arise. You are out of luck if privacy is in effect but that should be an understood sacrifice of such a specialized service.
7. Register important domains for a few years instead of just one so that you can be sure you will not lose your domain to renewal should you find yourself with a bad registrar.

Closing Remarks

My heart goes out to all of those affected by this horrid situation. The idea that clients of RegisterFly may have lost domains after investing thousands of hours and dollars in their website - is a sobering thought. I can only hope that those most painfully affected by this mess get some justice - better late than never.

PS. I don't think this post would be complete without a creative video that YouTube user "hd1080i" used to put the RegisterFly events into perspective.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jsrvUqj6cdU

About The Author
Ross Dunn is the founder and CEO of StepForth Search Engine Placement Inc. Based in Victoria, BC, Canada, StepForth has provided professional search engine placement and management services since 1997. Ross is a search engine optimization and placement expert with over 9 years of marketing experience and is a Certified Internet Marketing and Business Strategist (CIMBS). Blending his experience in the art of web design and search engine optimization, Ross offers a unique and informed perspective on obtaining top search engine placements. Ross can be reached at ross@stepforth.com.

Today we're going to share some insight and helpful tips on your first blog.. We've recently located a great source of helpful articles and tips for all you webmasters and bloggers out there. This is our first in a series of random topics webmasters may enjoy and find useful. Todays article comes from Donna Gunter about your first blog. Read up..

How to Create Your First Blog

By Donna Gunter © 2007

I've been blogging now for about 2 years, and I'm amazed at the amount of traffic that I get from my blog and the number of people who tell me that they first heard about me from my blog instead of my website. The word blog is derived from the term "web log", or an online diary or journal. If the HBO series Sex and the City were being filmed today, Carrie Bradshaw would be a blogger as well as a columnist, I think. Why? As she experiences her revelations about life, love, and relationships, she could post them to her blog for the world to see and comment upon.

Blogging has opened website creation to almost everyone, as it takes very little know-how to get a blog up and running. In fact, many service business owners are using a blog platform as their primary website, with some of them creating static pages as you would find on a traditional website, while others are using the platform as a blog and are posting updates regularly. There are several advantages to using blogs instead of ezines or traditional websites:

1. Search engines love blogs. The strategy that seems to be attractive to search engines today is regularly updated content. I can log-in to my blog at the beginning of a day and submit a post. Within 24 hours I'll get a notification from my Google alerts account that Google has indexed that post.
2. Content can be distributed quickly. If you instruct your visitors to subscribe to your blog via updating services like Bloglines or Feedblitz, they'll be notified within hours of any new posts on your blog.
3. Little web programming knowledge is required. Once your blog is set up, it's simply a matter of logging into your account, typing the info for you post, adding graphics or photos as needed, and publishing your post to your blog.
4. Reader feedback. Your readers can give you comments and feedback about your posts almost immediately after you log an entry. Blogs are a great way to engage your audience.

Are ezines and traditional websites dead? No, because people consume information differently. Some are auditory learners and prefer to hear the info (great audience for podcasting, an audio form of blogging), some prefer to receive updates as they are published (blog readers), while others like a stable, stationary medium to which they can refer when they're ready (readers who archive ezines or bookmark web pages).

How do you begin to blog? Here are 10 simple steps you can follow:

1. Blogging platform. The easiest way to get started is to use the free service found at Blogger.com or Wordpress.com. The ability to customize your blog is limited with the free services, so I urge my clients to subscribe to Typepad.com, which will host your blog for you on their servers, or purchase a hosting account where WordPress or b2evolution can be installed. The downloadable version of WordPress is located at Wordpress.org and b2evo can be found at www.b2evolution.net both are free of charge if you need/want to install Wordpress/b2evo yourself on your hosting account. I use Typepad for my blog, so many of my examples will relate exclusively to blogs hosted on that platform.
2. Name. What do you want to call your blog? Blog names tend to be attention-getting and off-beat. However, for service businesses, I encourage my clients to use keywords important to their business when naming their blog. You will also want to acquire the .com version of your blog's name or your blog's name with the word "blog" attach as your blog URL. After you have set up your blog, your blog provider can give you more info about how to map your domain to your blog. (Note: You don't want to simply forward your blog to your domain name, as that impacts the URLs of your individual blog pages).
3. Look and Layout. How many columns do you want to display? Do you want links to static pages? What colors do you want to use? How about a signup box for a free giveaway? Should you use one of the templates provided or have something custom designed? Do you want your blog archives displayed? Do you want to be the only author or do you want to permit others to make posts, as well? There are many questions you'll be asked in the startup phase about the look of your blog. A Typepad blog permits you to change your mind about your layout at a later date. The best way to determine the look of your blog is to look at the layout of other blogs and determine what appeals to you.
4. Widgets. There are a number of widgets, or add-on programs, that you can incorporate into your blog. Check your blog software's site for more info about what features you'd like add to your blog. At a minimum you'll want to give visitors a couple of ways in which they can receive blog updates through various updaters, or feeder services, as mentioned earlier.
5. Comments. The newest sp*am making its rounds online is comment sp*am. Don't these guys have anything better to do? Set your comments to moderated, which means that you have to approve any comments to your blog before the post goes live. You'll save yourself a great many headaches and time by choosing to moderate the comments.

Once you've gotten this far, you should have a basic blog established and are ready to begin to blog.

6. Blog content. The time has arrived -- your blog is ready to accept posts. What do you write about? You can post content rich articles of interest to your target market, comment on a current event, answer questions from your visitors, present a before and after case study outlining how your business helped someone, etc. Keep your eyes and ears open for information relevant to your audience. I use my blog to bring forth info that doesn't fit well into my newsletter format or something that arises between newsletter issues. I post my ezine content to my blog, as well.
7. Posting frequency. Blogs are just like gardens -- they need watering regularly and require some care and attention. For maximum effectiveness, you need to post several times a week to your blog. I try and post 4 times per week in my blog -- 2 posts are items I run across or comment upon as noteworthy in the moment, and the latter 2 are the contents of my ezine posted over 2 days. And, respond to reader's comments when they arrive -- blogs provide a great forum for ongoing discussions.
8. Blog traffic. In the same way that you publicize your website URL on everything that you do, you can similarly publicize your blog. Submitting your blogs to blog directories is another way to get traffic. A very comprehensive list of blog directories, RSS Top 55, has been compiled by Robin Good. Searching out blogs that appeal to your target market and making comments to those posts will also drive traffic to your blog. Another trick is to post your blog on social bookmarking sites like Reddit, Digg, StumbleUpon, and del.icio.us.
9. Measure the results. Some blog programs, like Typepad, have built-in statistics so you can view details of your blog traffic. Some of the feed/updater programs have built-in statistics as well, or you can install a metrics program as an add-on to your blog. Review your statistics regularly to determine how much traffic your blog generates.
10. Rinse and Repeat. Don't let the novelty of blogging wear off. Blogging is effective only if you continue your blogging efforts regularly over a long period of time. I know of several individuals who have gotten book deals from their blog and radio and TV interviews as well. Just think -- your blog might be your ticket to fame!

Every service business can benefit from blog technology. Few other marketing strategies provide the quick immediacy that blogging provides.

© 2007 Donna Gunter

Online Business Resource Queen (TM) and Business Coach Donna Gunter helps self-employed service professionals learn how to automate their businesses, leverage their expertise on the Internet, and get more clients online. To sign up for more FREE tips like these and claim your FREE gift, TurboCharge Your Online Marketing Toolkit, visit her site at www.GetMoreClientsOnline.com. Read about running an online biz at our blog, www.getmoreclientsonlineblog.com.

OK everyone, we just did a software update on the Blog today.. Not all the left nav bar is complete as well as our logo images yet, but expect them in a day or so.

All bugs, comments, and related stuff can be noted in the comments below.

Thanks