Two bills being voted on next week in the House of Representatives contain language that could censor the Internet in ways you would never imagine.

The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in the House of Representatives and the Protect IP Act (PIPA) in the Senate are well meaning, but if passed, will be destructive to internet freedoms we’ve all come to expect as well as forces that have helped innovation on the internet flourish. Both pieces of legislation greatly weaken theDigital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), which for over a decade has helped Internet companies grow and flourish.

The recording industry, movie studios and television studios are the driving forces behind these bills. We are all very aware of how the music industry ‘s slow and regressive response to digital music backfired while not helping recording artists or the music industry.

Instead of creating better ways to legally download music (as Apple did for them by creating iTunes), their solution was to sue music lovers. Imagine the repercussions of this industry, and the Hollywood studios that have not adapted to how digital innovations have affected their industry, dictating policies that regulate the Internet.

Some of the companies and organizations that have opposed these bills so far include American Express, AOL, Creative Commons, Demand Progress, Discover, eBay, Etsy, Facebook, Foursquare, Google, LinkedIn, MoveOn, Mozilla, OpenDNS, PayPal, Twitter, Visa, Wikimedia Foundation, Yahoo! and Zynga. They are joined by web founders, public interest groups, non-profits, advocacy organizations, thinktanks, industry associations, websites, online services, cybersecurity companies, engineers, international human rights advocates, entrepreneurs, founders, CEOs, executives, venture capitalists, academics, experts, educators, editorial boards and student newspapers.

Would you rather have these companies and Internet-related professionals determine what’s best for the Internet and its users? We can probably agree that they are more aware of what’s beneficial for the Internet than the Recording Industry Association of America and the Motion Picture Association of America.

Reddit has announced a blackout on January 18th to protest SOPA and Wikipedia is considering joiningthem. Thousands of people are changing their Twitter and Facebook avatars to include a Blackout SOPAbadge across their face in protest.

SOPA and PIPA aim to help private corporations shut down unauthorized websites where people download music, movies, and TV shows. Most of these websites are outside of America, so these corporations are looking to combat them in a few ways. 1) Block access to infringing domain names. 2) Sue U.S. based search engines, blogs, websites, directories and forums to remove links to these sites. 3) Stop funding these websites by not allowing advertisers to support them.

The consequences that SOPA and PIPA supporters do not mention include: 1) This will not stop downloaders. History has proven this. 2) It will cripple startups by allowing corporations to sue any company they decide is not filtering to their subjective satisfaction. One of these lawsuits can easily bankrupt new websites and search engines that offer competitive alternatives to their corporate brethren. 3) The ambiguous language in PIPA and SOPA leaves plenty of room for misinterpretation that can make websites pioneering new avenues look like pirates. In the past, this could have affected sites like YouTube, Twitter, Tumblr, Pinterest, Facebook and hundreds of other social sites where people express themselves, organize protests, share news or make art.

The bottom line and main question to ask yourself is, “Do I trust the U.S. government to censor the Internet and protect free expression of its people? And if I do, do I trust other governments who will probably follow suit?” The next question to ask yourself is, “Is it worth the potential of creating a censored internet that is less innovative and stable in order to possibly help the RIAA and MPAA sell more music and movies?”

I strongly recommend contacting your Senators and Congressional Representatives or visiting American Censorship to make your voice heard on these critical bills that can negatively impact the Internet that you use every day. If online activists could make GoDaddy flip its support on SOPA and PIPA, then it can happen with Congress too.

This article was originally posted in Huffington Post

All attempts so far to create economic policies to stimulate the economy have failed. The economic stimulus act of 2008 proved to be a partial success or absolute failure depending on whose opinion you agree with. Regardless of how this act affected banks like Goldman Sachs and Bank of America, the American people only noticed their economic standings continue to spiral downward.

It’s time to try something new. In reviewing the Tumblr blog for We Are The 99% there are a few themes that appear. People feel that they are mostly hurting because of the lack of job opportunities, the low wages of being underemployed, rising food costs, unaffordable health care and trying to pay off student loans.

What would happen if criteria was created by which Federal student loan debts could be forgiven in a fashion similar to how we have forgiven the debts of Third World Countries? As of June 2010, Americans owed $826.5 billion in student loans. This was the magic number that put student loan debt at the top of the debt mountain with the distinction of surpassing American credit card debt.

This article originally appeared in the Huffington Post. Read the full article here.

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Technology has rocked our world repeatedly in profound ways. This will happen many more times and is about to happen again with Google Wave.  It’s going to be a tidal wave!

Imagine email, instant messaging, document sharing and much more integrated into a real time platform.  Or don’t imagine it and just wait a few months because that’s when you’ll be using Google Wave. TechCrunch has a great overview explaining why this is a game-changing product.

With Google Wave being announced it seems like a good time to shine a spotlight on how our world has changed from the release of disruptive technologies.  Some of my favorites have been:

• Smart Phones – before them we actually used a phone for making calls.  Now we use our phones as watches, computers, Rolodexes, calendars, cameras, alarm clocks, jukeboxes, photo albums, yellow page directories, news resources, email clients, video game consoles and a hundred other devices-in-one.
• Pagers – First drug dealers used them with pay phones (remember those?  …pay phones, not drug dealers) and parents used them to get their kids to call home.   With their arrival we began to move into a world where we could be found at any moment aside from being in the shower.
• Mobile Phones - Remember when phones were used connect with a specific location?  Now they are used to connect to a person in any location.  This created a major shift in how we communicate.
• Satellites – Before 1957 there were no satellites.  Fifty-two years later we use them for many purposes across industries as varied as radio, television, telecommunications, navigation, meteorology, land mapping, business & finance, climate & environmental monitoring, space science to name a few.  When is the last time you used a paper map instead of Google Maps on your phone or computer?
• Cable news – I don’t watch it, think it’s moronic and a tabloid distraction, but when it first debuted it was a positive revolution to have 24 hour news.  It killed the habit of tuning into the evening news and broadened possibilities before imploding into itself and beginning to be killed by my favorite disruptive technology so far…
• The Interwebs – Also know as the intertubes or the internet.  Since you’re reading this on the internet you probably know how transformational the internet and personal computers have been.  Pause for a moment and try to remember what your life was like before owning a personal computer, much less a laptop or smart phone.

Some technologies that were revolutionary and became extinct include the betamax, laser discs, vinyl albums, Polaroid pictures, PDAs, 8 Track tapes, cassette tapes and floppy discs.  The thing is, they were all necessary bridges to our modern world of digital convenience.  Much like how email and verbal voice mail may be out of use in 10 years, but they are necessary and interesting to us today.

The key to new innovative disruptive technologies is to look for the opportunities rather than being afraid because the old ways are passing away.  Dinosaur industries like music, TV and newspapers could have done much better than they have in the last 10 years.

They are still blowing it by blaming the world for changing rather than blaming their antiquated hierarchical business models.  The old models had large overheads and made a ton of money for few people while taking advantage of many others.  The new models value human, social, financial and environmental capital equally while collaborating to benefit many through innovation with low costs of entry.

There are tons of great examples like Amazon that have changed our personal and professional lives in deeply profound ways by unleashing innovative products, services and distribution models to an unsuspecting public.  Google Wave is just the next best thing, but lets welcome the changes it will bring to help us to do life in better and more collaborative ways.

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Laws are not selective, unless you’re either rich, powerful, a celebrity , politically connected, or know someone who is when you break one.

Gravity is a law. It works 100% of the time with no excuses whether you like it or not.  In fact, you don’t have to buy a book or movie to see how it works; nor do you have to believe in it.  Gravity is a law of physics and doesn’t care what you think. It just does it’s ‘gravity’ thing and you cannot fight it and win.  Ever.  No matter what.

Attraction, the new age kind rather than the law of physics kind, is an emotional or electromagnetic force that does not occur consistently but appeals greatly to our greed, arrogance and inherent need to feel special.

If there was a Law of Attraction then the millions of consumers of the law of attraction and Oprah viewers worldwide would be manifesting every material desire for their health, relationships, careers and financial material wealth that the NYT #1 Best Seller, The Secret, promised them rather than there being a global recession.

Have you talked to a law of attraction believer lately?  How’s it working beyond believing results will arrive at some soon yet undisclosed time after years of practice?

Obama could mandate that every American citizen has to think better thoughts so we can attract our way out of economic crisis and have everything our hearts desire.  Yeah, an army of attractors, that’s the ticket.  Someone get that idea to the Treasury Secretary stat!

Good Emotional Marketing = Many Believers and More Manifrustration

Forget for a moment that the stars of The Secret are seasoned professional marketers who became even more rich and famous after inventing The Secret as a brand, and are about to unleash a sequel to get even more rich and famous.  (Cash cows have got to be milked, even in spiritual capitalism, right?)

Forget that the unfulfilled promises in The Secret just happen to be for the four things every psychic and marketer happens to sell you hope for – money, relationships, health and avoidance of death, lets look at the definitions of attraction from Dictionary.com that apply:

5.Physics. the electric or magnetic force that acts between oppositely charged bodies, tending to draw them together.

6. an entertainment offered to the public.

For #5 note that it says “oppositely charged” which is contradictory to the Secret’s formula of aligning yourself with what you want to attract.  So maybe thinking about poverty is the true road to attracting wealth. hmmm….

Also for #5, there is a “tendency” rather than a law (i.e. – a principle based on the predictable consequences of an act, condition, etc.: the law of supply and demand) though for #6 we’re getting closer.

It is practically a law that the public will pay to be entertained – especially if that entertainment makes them feel like they are special.

Instead, most people practicing the law of attraction techniques live in constant hope and manifrustration which ironically was the same state they lived in before buying into the marketing campaign for the law of attraction.

It Works Fine, You’re the One Who’s Broken

The scapegoat is that when the law of attraction doesn’t work there’s an easy answer; the law works, but YOU are the problem.  You’re not believing hard enough.  (You and the tens of millions of others who aren’t getting results.  Would you keep taking a drug with results like these?)

This is what bothers me the most.  It’s the same crazy making blame game that people get in multi-level marketing and sales rooms with no proven sales system.

Remember that you only need a handful of success stories (or actors reading their lines) on your infomercial to appear successful and deflect the fact that 99% of your customers didn’t lose weight with your plastic exercise device.

How many people do you know of who appear to have great relationships, material wealth, successful careers or great health?  Out of those people who enjoy the results promised by marketers of the law of attraction, how many do you think practiced the principals in The Secret?

Most successful people I know have been so busy taking action to create results that they didn’t have time to watch the Secret movie much less buy into it’s superstition.  A couple of them do have vision boards and the like, but they use those tools to remind them of what they’re working so hard to achieve while taking massive amounts of action.

Notice that the correlation of success to taking action, reviewing results and taking more action (very concrete steps) is much higher than the correlation of success to ‘believing the right thoughts’ – which is pretty damned nebulous.  Who determines what thoughts are right and whether they’re ‘right’ enough to attract what you want?

Note that magnets attract 100% of the time by being in proximity to what they naturally attract, metal.  A magnet needs to be close to it’s target (humans do this by taking action) and it does not attract anything else like sand, carpet or plastic (which would be what for humans?  Bad jobs? Mean people? Losing money?)

The Secrets to Success

Sorry Charlie, the secret to success is that there is no perfect formula to follow that anyone can sell to you.

See, there are also people taking tons of action and not getting results with or without playing The Secret game.  Heck, you may even know some or be one of them.  Look in the mirror real quick and check.

Why aren’t they succeeding?  Luck, timing, how they did in the womb lottery (being born in L.A. gives you a better shot, though no guarantee, at success than being born in Uganda), how rich and powerful their families were or weren’t, whether their talent was nurtured or not, who they did or didn’t  meet as they grew up, how industrious their attitude is, and so on.

Read Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers: The Story of Success,  Geoff Covin’s Talent Is Overrated: What Really Separates World-Class Performers from Everybody Else or Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets to really wake up to this.

Can the principals work?  Maybe.  Are they the principals most successful people throughout history have used?  No.  Will they work for you? Magic 8 ball says “probability doubtful.”   Will a little focus and a lot of action give you a better shot at achieving your goals? Probably.

A Mind is a Terrible Thing

The mind makes up meaning and is not very good at it.  That’s it’s job like a teenager’s job is to push their parents buttons.  That’s just how the wiring works.  Deal with it.

In hindsight, you will probably attribute your success or lack thereof to a misguided conclusion that getting up early, practicing the law of attraction, going to a good school or whatever explains your situation.  The truth is that many factors, including many we miss, contribute to our perceived failures and successes.

Do your thoughts create your reality? Well, thinking positively and consciously is never a bad thing, but we’ve all experienced both great and terrible circumstances without either consciously believing that we could or couldn’t experience them.

Did most of your happiest moments occur after intense practice visualizing them?  I didn’t think so.  How about your unhappiest? Uh huh.  And you’re moderately not-so-notable experiences?  Okay.

If You Believe in the Law of Attraction it Can’t Just Work for the Stuff You Like.

Are children molested, adults contracting cancer or drivers getting in car accidents because their thoughts attracted that experience?

Did the US Airways flight crash into the Hudson with no casualties because the passengers were attracting an exciting yet non-lethal experience in an airplane?

Or maybe it was because the pilot was skilled and had been flying since he was a teenager which enabled him to react in the best possible way to a random life threatening occurrence.

Or maybe we’ll never know because our brains are experts at making meaning out of the first possible plausible explanation it comes up with or is exposed to.

Did every single one of the 9/11 victims or the millions of Iraqi’s killed in the last 8 years envision those experiences to manifest them?  If some of those 9/11 victims would have told someone their visions of planes crashing into buildings maybe we could have prepared better.

Law of attraction? Nope.  Theory of attraction? More accurate by definition.

If it helps you to take better action in your life great.  If it’s another late night infomercial emotional crutch to provide false hope, not so good.

Ask your doctor if the law of attraction is right for you and then remember that results WILL vary.  You can count on that.

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In the current job climate many people are more vulnerable than usual to work at home scams.  I work from home, but not for a multi-level company promising the moon for very little work.

I’m a consultant and my clients are legitimate companies that hire me for concrete services like copywriting, designing and implementing marketing strategies and improving brand stature, not to recruit others into “the business” or promise that if I buy their $100 – $3,000 program I’ll make $500 a day doing data entry work.

The bottom line is that you never have to pay to start working a legitimate job. When your gut clenches as you read these “opportunity” sales pitches there’s a reason.  Mother nature and your gut do not lie, but your mind can be fooled.

Can you make money with some of these programs?  Maybe.  Will you achieve even half the level of income promised without four times the work promised and some luck?  Doubtful.

If you search “work at home” on You Tube you’ll find 144,000 videos trying to recruit you into some companies “easy” system and even showing a picture of a check reflecting “legitimate income.”

Just pass on by.  Especially if you hear the words, “you only need to get 2 who get 2 who get 2 and then you’ll be rolling in residual income.”  …unless you want a full time job as a recruiter.

There are legitimate work from home businesses, but most of what you’ll find is a scam.  For deeper details on this visit the Crimes of Persuasion: Schemes, Scams and Frauds site.  Here’s their mission statement:

To inform the public, along with law enforcement personnel, justice officials and victim support groups on the workings and scope of telemarketing and investment fraud so that efforts can effectively be taken to minimize the impact on its victims and ensure that adequate penalties are in place to deter the perpetrators.

It only takes a few success stories to make anything look attractive and make you think, “Hey, I could do that too.”

It’s great marketing, but lacks integrity because they tell you what you “can” do without acknowledging that very few succeed.  If you pay attention you’ll notice the detail in never using the word “will” instead of “can” because then they can be sued for promising results that rarely come to be.

What you don’t see is the hundreds or thousands of road kill past suckers that tried the program and failed.  Twenty successes on an infomercial looks like a lot until you realize that it’s 20 out of 10,000 and the other 9,980 people who tried it couldn’t make it work.

Use common sense, keep your greed (and wallet) in check and realize that success for most people comes from steady work they enjoy and spending less money than they earn.

Get rich quick is a marketing scam, especially when it’s dressed up and labeled as a “business” or “business opportunity.”  Don’t buy it.

It’s not news that how you think the world is defines how it is for you.  What’s amazing is how many of us learn this, but continue to go through life thinking that our way is THE way.  Is your glass half full or half empty?

With the unending drum beat about the economy “crisis,” pounding through our heads it seems like a good time to revisit this.  Humans are emotional creatures that react to people’s comments on perceived circumstances more often than being proactive in choosing how to create their lives.  This phenomenon lends itself to leading us astray based on our past beliefs and current assessments of our lives.

There is no doubt that the U.S. economy is slow and translates into hard times for a large number of it’s citizens.  That said, they sky isn’t falling, just like it wasn’t falling on September 11, 2001.  Unfortunate events yes, but extreme fearful reactions just make up mental suffering.  They are blips on the screen when you view the full scope of your life.

Money is a very funny thing.  These days it’s mostly digital bytes on a screen.  And economies based on money are totally made up conversations.

Who decided to create interest rates, compound interest, zero interest loans with huge interest back ends, stock derivatives, hedge funds, money market accounts, savings accounts, certificate of deposit rates, consumer price indexes, etc.?  They’re all made up structures, which can be changed, not laws of the universe.

Money is nothing but a mental agreement where we all decided that U.S. Treasury green backs have value but Monopoly money doesn’t have value even though they’re both just pieces of paper.  You could argue that money is backed by valuable minerals like gold and silver, but who decided they were valuable?

Do you know who decided that diamonds were valuable? De Beers Diamond company and their amazing PR team who intentionally lied to the public creating a perception that diamonds are the rarest gem on Earth.  If your wife perceives that diamonds are valuable, though it’s not true, then you’ll pay 3 months salary for one and she’ll be thrilled because she thinks her perception is THE real perception.

We somehow created an extra $9 billion a month for 5 years and counting for an Iraq invasion and occupation, we found $700 billion to bail out Wall Street, and over decades we haven’t been able to allocate a few million dollars to improve America’s dilapidated schools.

It’s a matter of perception and priorities.  Regardless of what you  think of the way our social systems operate, money seems to be created when it’s needed.

Before selling my house a couple of years ago I remember thinking how crazy it was that a 2,500 sq ft house built in 1992 should be valued at over $500,000.  I was right.  The market was way over valued based on dumb reactions to perceptions real estate buyers had.

They were reacting to a perception that housing values would go up forever and they were missing out if they didn’t have rental property in addition to their own homes.  The appraisal on that house is surely lower today than it was 3 years ago.  It’s the same house.  The only thing that’s different is public perception.

Today many stocks are extremely undervalued just like a few years ago real estate was overvalued.  The market reacts illogically every day to everchanging perceptions. It’s nothing new.

So take a deep breath, smile , and spend more time creating the life you enjoy rather than following the negative news of the day.  As all things do, this too shall pass and your glass will be half full or half empty based on your perception.  What’s it gonna be?

If you have not seen this video, please take the time to watch it.  This will explain how we have gotten to this point.  Have you ever thought why there is more debt in this world than there is money to repay it? This video will explain it all and more…

Paul Grignon’s 47-minute animated presentation of “Money as Debt” tells in very simple and effective graphic terms what money is and how it is being created. It is an entertaining way to get the message out. The Cowichan Citizens Coalition and its “Duncan Initiative” received high praise from those who previewed it. I recommend it as a painless but hard-hitting educational tool and encourage the widest distribution and use by all groups concerned with the present unsustainable monetary system in Canada and the United States.

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Naomi Klein explains how the Shock Doctrine is being played out in the current economic crisis.  Disaster capitalism has come home to America.  Don’t buy into the fear, this too shall pass.  It’s a good time to remember to follow common sense and fight the impulse to react emotionally.

When you consume news remember that it too is a product being marketed.

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Why are we listening to financial “experts”?  Have you noticed that all of the so-called experts on television and in print are the same people who did not notice or warn anyone about the current financial situation?  So what gives them the expertise to now give out advice on how to repair it?

Before you follow the advice of the talking heads on TV it may be a good idea to check their track records first.  This video is funny though it’s also very educational in explaining how some aspects of the financial markets market their dodgy products to consumers like you and me.

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It’s already being prophesized that the next financial meltdown wave will be focused on credit card debt.

The abuse of credit cards by both lenders and borrowers has been well documented for awhile.  Since most of the population blindly racks up credit card debt with little awareness around the pitfalls of being on the giving end of compound interest, I had to add a post on Maxed Out.

It’s a blessing that someone made a documentary explaining the predatory lending practices executed by some of the biggest names in banking.  I highly recommend renting this film as well as reading  Dave Ramsey’s Total Money Makeover book, taking Dave’s Financial Peace University course (The cost is almost nothing and it’s invaluable) along with listening to Dave’s daily radio show either online, on terrestrial radio or watching it on cable TV. Dave is one the people interviewed in the film and diving into his advice is your next step after watching the movie.

If I could change one thing in my financial life it would have been to have learned about Dave Ramsey sooner in life.  The only thing that could have come close would have been to have someone else explain how to handle money as simply and effectively as he does.  When I saw Dave Ramsey on 60 minutes a few years ago and read Total Money Makeover it changed my financial habits for the better and forever.  You can’t put a price on financial peace and it only costs a little time and focus to make it happen.

So, back to Maxed Out.  Here’s the skinny on what it’s about:

Maxed Out takes viewers on a journey deep inside the American style of debt, where things seem fine as long as the minimum monthly payment arrives on time. With coverage that spans from small American towns all the way to the White House, the film shows how the modern financial industry really works, explains the true definition of “preferred customer” and tells us why the poor are getting poorer while the rich keep getting richer. Hilarious, shocking and incisive, Maxed Out paints a picture of a national nightmare which is all too real for most of us. Great for college students.

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