ACTA (“Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement”) is a proposed new international law establishing international enforcement standards against counterfeit goods and pirated intellectual property items. ACTA was negotiated as a “trade agreement” which means that it was negotiated in private without open involvement of all the stakeholders. There has been no formal opportunity for input from people other than those who were lucky enough to be invited into the private discussions.

This is a bad way to build Internet policy. The Internet is a fundamental platform for communication and interaction. There are many stakeholders. The voices of human empowerment, human rights, and competing economic interests must be heard. These voices must have a place at the table when policy is debated. ACTA was not created through such a process.

Mozilla builds products, like Firefox, that put users in control of their online experience and shape the future of the Web — not for profit, but for good. As part of our commitment to making a difference, this holiday season we’re hoping to get everyone in on the spirit of doing good. So, just like we do with Firefox, let’s turn individual action into global impact together.

We brought together 12  cause-minded celebrities, and started each team with a $5,000 donation.

The initial celebrity and cause teams include:

• Paul Rudd, The Rolling Dog Farm
• Will Ferrell, Cancer for College
• David Blaine, Charity: Water
• Barbra Streisand, Cedars-Sinai Women’s Heart Center
• Jason Bateman, City Year
• Christy Turlington Burns, Every Mother Counts
• Sophia Bush, F Cancer
• Seth Rogen, The Alzheimer’s Association
• Sean Penn, The J/P Haitian Relief Organization
• Edward Norton, The Maasai Wilderness Conservation Trust
• Jonah Hill, Nothing But Nets
• Zooey Deschanel, The Innocence Project

Starting today, anyone can take part in the Mozilla Firefox Challenge by donating to a celebrity’s cause or fundraising for their own cause.

Mozilla will donate $25,000 to the cause that raises the most money between now and Jan 11, 2012. Each celebrity team is giving away great prizes too. You could win a poster from the film Milk, signed by Sean Penn, an iChat with Seth Rogen, a visit to the Arrested Development set with Jason Bateman, an outgoing voicemail greeting recorded by Paul Rudd and more.

Join us and let’s show the world how much good we can do!

Learn more and view the complete terms and conditions at http://crowdrise.com/firefoxchallenge

Paul Rudd
	Actor Paul Rudd has starred in such movies as Anchorman, The 40-Year-Old Virgin, Knocked Up, Forgetting Sarah Marshall, Dinner For Schmucks, Role Models, I Love You, Man, and recently, Our Idiot Brother. Rudd’s cause is the Rolling Dog Farm, which was his father’s pet project, so now he’s throwing them a bone, too. Rolling Dog Farm rescues and shelters disabled animals. They come to the farm from human societies, animal control shelters and rescue groups across the country. They do not consider themselves handicapped – they want to get on with life and enjoy themselves and that’s what they get to do at the Rolling Dog Farm. Click here to check out Paul’s fundraiser and donate $29 for a chance to win a voicemail greeting on your phone from Paul Rudd.
Will Ferrell
	Actor Will Ferrell has delighted audiences in such movies such as Old School, Elf, Anchorman, Talladega Nights, Stranger Than Fiction, Semi-Pro, and The Other Guys. He launched the popular website, “Funny or Die.” Recently, Ferrell starred in the dramatic, Everything Must Go. Ferrell is supporting a cause that hits close to home – Cancer for College. This charity was founded by Ferrell’s good friend, a two-time cancer survivor. Cancer for College was founded by Craig Pollard, a two-time cancer survivor, to help cancer survivors and amputees realize their dream of going to college. The bills from hospital visits, surgeries, and treatments are expensive, and even when cancer goes into remission, the battle and bills aren’t over. Cancer for College provides hope and inspiration by providing college scholarships. Click here to check out Will’s fundraiser and donate $21 for a chance to win a Cowbell signed by him.
David Blaine
	The New York Times calls David Blaine a modern day Houdini. USA Today calls him the “hottest name in magic right now.” He sets and breaks world records, performs for American presidents, international presidents, actors, even Muhammed Ali, and performed during the Superbowl Half Time Show. Blaine travels across the world to perform magic for charity – and the charity he’s supporting now is Charity: Water. There are a billion people on the planet who don’t have clean water. That’s one in every eight people. Charity: Water is a non-profit organization bringing clean and safe drinking water to people in developing nations. Click here to check out David’s fundraiser and donate $22 for a chance to win a signed deck of cards and he’ll follow you on Twitter for a week.
Jason Bateman
	Jason Bateman starred on the hit series, Arrested Development. Bateman is also known for his roles in the films we watch over and over – to name a few, Dodgeball, The Break-Up, Juno, Hancock, Up in the Air, Couples Retreat, The Switch, Paul, Horrible Bosses, and The Change-Up.Bateman is fighting for the charity, City Year, because he knows the statistics – every 26 seconds, a student gives up on school in America. City Year members serve as tutors and role models to help students stay on track to graduate. City Year is an education focused, non-profit organization wholly focused on fighting the national school dropout crisis. City Year is committed to leverage the talent, energy and idealism of its members to serve as tutors and role models in schools to help students stay on track – and get back on track – to graduate. Click here to check out Jason’s fundraiser and donate $59 for a chance to win a visit the Arrested Development set.
Christy Turlington Burns
	Christy Turlington Burns is a model. Turlington Burns appears in fashion documentaries, music videos, and graces the covers of hundreds of magazines. She has worked as a guest correspondent on the NBC Today Show. In 2005, Turlington Burns began working with CARE, and, since became their Advocate for maternal health. This work inspired pursuit of a master’s degree in public health and her first documentary, No Woman, No Cry, which tells the stories of at-risk pregnant women worldwide. After the documentary in 2010, Turlington Burns founded her charity, Every Mother Counts, so she could keep the action going. A woman dies every 90 seconds from complications of pregnancy. 90% of these deaths are preventable. Every Mother Counts is an advocacy and mobilization campaign to increase education and support for maternal and child health. Every Mother Counts is working to build a clinic for mothers in need in Indonesia this holiday season. Why Indonesia? It’s one of the hardest hit countries in terms of maternal death. Click here to check out Christy’s fundraiser and donate $21 for a chance to win a live chat over Skype with Christy.
Sophia Bush
	Sophia Bush is an actress, director and spokesperson, currently starring in the hit television series, One Tree Hill. Bush appears in movies, including Van Wilder, The Hitcher, John Tucker Must Die and The Narrows.Bush is a serious activist, involved in both political and environmental issues. This time, Bush is fighting for the charity, F Cancer, because she knows that this is one of the only charities that focuses on the early detection of cancer, which may be the very best chance at a cure. F Cancer is a movement that activates Generation Y to engage with their parents about early detection of cancer. Over 90% of cancers are curable if caught in stage one – why don’t more people know this? F Cancer is creating a generation of early detection ambassadors who, by learning about what to do to stay healthy, what to watch out for, and what questions to ask, are taking control of their own health and the health of their parents. Click here to check out Sophia’s fundraiser and donate $29 for chance to win a signed F Cancer T-Shirt.
Seth Rogen
	Seth Rogen is a comedic genius. He has starred in the 40 Year Old Virgin, Knocked Up, Superbad, Pineapple Express, Funny People and The Green Hornet. Many of these movies he wrote and produced as well. He won an Emmy for his writing on Da Ali G Show. We hear Rogen’s voice in Horton Hears a Who!, Kung Fu Panda, Monsters vs. Aliens, and Paul. And, recently we see and love Rogen in his comedy-drama, 50/50. Rogen is supporting the Alzheimer’s Association – a fatal disease, affecting millions of people and it’s on the rise. The Alzheimer’s Association is the leading voluntary health organization in Alzheimer care, support and research. The mission is to eliminate Alzheimer’s disease through the advancement of research; to provide and enhance care and support for all affected; and to reduce the risk of dementia through the promotion of brain health. Click here to check out Seth’s fundraiser and donate or raise $75 for a chance to win an ichat with Seth.
Sean Penn
	Sean Penn is a two-time Academy Award winner for his roles in Mystic River and Milk and received a Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild Award for the same roles. Penn’s beloved movies include Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Carlito’s Way, Dead Man Walking, Being John Malkovich, I am Sam, All the King’s Men, and recently, The Tree of Life.In addition to his films, Penn is known for his activism – notably his humanitarian work following Hurricane Katrina and the 2010 Haiti Earthquake. Penn, committed to his work in Haiti, founded his cause – the J/P Haitian Relief Organization. The J/P Haitian Relief Organization formed shortly after the 2010 earthquake hit in Haiti. Founded by Sean Penn, they began as an emergency response organization. It became clear that Haiti didn’t need a quick fix – Haiti needs long-term support, including fixing homes, helping families, providing education, building job programs, and developing health programs. Working with the Haitian people and their government, JP HRO is committed to helping the hundreds of thousands still displaced by the earthquake. Click here to check out Sean’s fundraiser and donate $32 for a chance to win a signed Milk movie poster.
Edward Norton
	Edward Norton is an actor, screenwriter, director, producer, activist, and recently, launched online fundraising, social networking website, CrowdRise. He earned Academy Award nominations for his roles in Primal Fear and American History X. Other Norton films include Kingdom of Heaven, The Illusionist, The Painted Veil, Rounders, Fight Club, 25th Hour, Red Dragon, The Incredible Hulk, and Leaves of Grass. Norton made his directorial debut in 2000 with film, Keeping the Faith and is slated to direct an adaptation of novel, Motherless Brooklyn.Norton ran the NYC Marathon in 2009 to raise money for the Maasai Wilderness Conservation with a team of Maasai Warriors. Edward is the UN ambassador for Biodiversity and president of the board for Maasai Wilderness Conservation. The Maasai Wilderness Conservation Trust (MWCT) works to protect the legendary ecosystems and astounding biodiversity of East Africa through conservation that directly benefits local Maasai communities – lions, elephants, great herds of antelopes and the Maasai people of Kenya. MWCT funds and operates programs that promote a cutting edge model of successful community-based conservation – programs include lease payments for conservancy zones, carbon credits, payments for watershed protection, sustainable eco-tourism, wildlife monitoring and security, conservation and tourism employment. Click here to check out Edward’s fundraiser and donate $33 for a chance to win 2 tickets to the premiere of his new movie, Bourne Legacy.
Jonah Hill
	Jonah Hill is currently starring in The Sitter. His other films included Superbad, Knocked Up, Funny People, Get Him to the Greek, Cyrus, and Moneyball. Jonah is also a writer and will be seen in the upcoming 21 Jump Street.Malaria is a disease transmitted by mosquitoes.Malaria kills nearly one million people per year – mostly children under the age of five. Malaria is also the number one killer of refugees in Africa. Nothing But Nets is working closely with the United Nations Refugee Agency to send urgently-needed insecticide-treated bed nets to more than one million refugees in 15 countries. Click here to check out Jonah’s fundraiser and donate $30 for a chance to win a signed BUZZKILL T-Shirt and he’ll send you a personal voicemail.
Zooey Deschanel
	Zooey Deschanel is an actress and musician. Deschanel’s has appeared in Elf, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Failure To Launch, Bridge to Terabithia, The Happening, Yes Man and 500 Days of Summer.Deschanel currently stars in the Fox series, New Girl. She plays keyboards, percussion, banjo, ukulele and sings in some of her films. Deschanel’s cause is The Innocence Project. She cannot imagine how the devastation a person experience when wrongly accused of a crime. The Innocence Project is a national litigation and public policy organization dedicated to exonerating wrongfully convicted individuals through DNA testing and reforming the judicial system to prevent future injustice. To date, 280 people in the United States have been exonerated by DNA testing, including 17 who served time on death row. These people served an average of 13 years in prison before exoneration and release. Click here to check out Zooey’s fundraiser and donate $26 for a chance to win a signed Elf DVD
Barbra Streisand
	Actress, singer, director, writer, composer, producer, designer, author, activist, Barbra Streisand is the only artist to receive an Oscar, Tony, Emmy, Grammy, Directors Guild of America, Golden Globe, National Medal of Arts and Peabody Awards and France’s Legion d’Honneur as well as the American Film Institute’s Lifetime Achievement Award. The three films she directed won 14 Oscar nominations. Only Elvis has more Gold records than she. Her activism is just as impressive. Ms. Streisand is incredibly passionate about her cause Women’s Heart Disease and the Women’s Heart Center at Cedars Sinai Medical Center. For this reason, she created a program in her name to fight the epidemic. Heart disease is the number one killer of women today. More women are dying of heart disease than men. Despite the fact that heart attacks present differently in men versus women, we still treat women based on research done on men. For these reasons, Barbra Streisand created the Barbra Streisand Women’s Cardiovascular Research and Education Program at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. Click here to check out Barbra’s fundraiser and donate $31 for a chance to win a signed copy of Barbra’s book: “My Passion for Design.”

This marks the first time we’ve come together with these giants of the Internet on any policy issue. The decision to inform legislators and users of our serious reservations with SOPA was a no-brainer and fell into place quickly over just a few days of discussion. We believe The Stop Online Piracy Act threatens our ability as an industry to continue to offer our many important software and web services to the hundreds of millions of users who rely on them, as well as the many employees and developers we support to innovate these technologies.

For Mozilla, we see this as a fight for the future of the Internet. Mozilla’s General Counsel, Harvey Anderson, blogged a few days ago that if the legislation were to pass into law it would likely chill free expression online, expose Internet users and companies to undue liability, be abused by plaintiffs, and still ultimately fail in its goal to thwart piracy.

We encourage you to take action today and tell your Congressional representatives how you feel about SOPA!

Here’s a copy of our letter to Congressional leaders:

Dear Chairman Leahy, Ranking Member Grassley, Chairman Smith and Ranking Member Conyers:

The undersigned Internet and technology companies write to express our concern with legislative measures that have been introduced in the United States Senate and United States House of Representatives, S. 968 (the “PROTECT IP Act”) and H.R. 3261 (the “Stop Online Piracy Act”).

We support the bills’ stated goals — providing additional enforcement tools to combat foreign “rogue” websites that are dedicated to copyright infringement or counterfeiting.  Unfortunately, the bills as drafted would expose law-abiding U.S. Internet and technology companies to new uncertain liabilities, private rights of action, and technology mandates that would require monitoring of web sites.  We are concerned that these measures pose a serious risk to our industry’s continued track record of innovation and job-creation, as well as to our Nation’s cybersecurity. We cannot support these bills as written and ask that you consider more targeted ways to combat foreign “rogue” websites dedicated to copyright infringement and trademark counterfeiting, while preserving the innovation and dynamism that has made the internet such an important driver of economic growth and job creation.

One issue merits special attention. We are very concerned that the bills as written would seriously undermine the effective mechanism Congress enacted in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) to provide a safe harbor for internet companies that act in good faith to remove infringing content from their sites.  Since their enactment in 1998, the DMCA’s safe harbor provisions for online service providers have been a cornerstone of the U.S. Internet and technology industry’s growth and success.  While we work together to find additional ways to target foreign rogue sites, we should not jeopardize a foundational structure that has worked for content owners and Internet companies alike and provides certainty to innovators with new ideas for how people create, find, discuss, and share information lawfully online.

We are proud to be part of an industry that has been crucial to U.S. economic growth and job creation. A recent McKinsey Global Institute Report found that the Internet accounts for 3.4 percent of GDP in the 13 countries that they studied, and, in the U.S., the Internet’s contribution to GDP is even larger. If Internet consumption and expenditure were a sector, its contribution to GDP would be bigger than energy, agriculture, communication, mining, or utilities. In addition, the Internet industry has increased productivity for small and medium-sized businesses by 10%.  We urge you not to risk either this success or the tremendous benefits these new platforms have brought to hundreds of millions of Americans and people around the world.

We stand ready to work with the Congress to develop targeted solutions to addressing the problem of foreign rogue websites.

Thank you in advance for your consideration.

Sincerely,

AOL
eBay
Facebook
Google
LinkedIn
Mozilla
Twitter
Yahoo!
Zynga

Additional links to the bill and other commentary can be found below:

• HR 3261 – SOPA Bill Text
• CDT – Growing Chorus of Opposition to “Stop Online Piracy Act”
• Professors’ Letter in Opposition to “Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property Act of 2011” (PROTECT‐IP Act of 2011, S. 968)
• CNET -  SOPA: Hollywood’s latest effort to turn back time
• CNET – US Government Also a Villian in piracy act story
• EFF – SOPA: Hollywood Finally Gets A Chance to Break the Internet
• Corporate Law Report – SOPA? E-PARASITE Act? Whatever It’s Called, Here’s A Primer on the Latest in Protect IP
• Techdirt - An Open Letter To Chris Dodd: Silicon Valley Can’t Help Hollywood If You First Cripple It With Bad Regulation

From left to right: Cole, Nichola, Dan, Laurian & Mark

Mark Boas | Al Jazeera
Mark makes, teaches, writes about and promotes new and open web technologies. Co-founder of Happyworm, a tiny entrepreneurial web agency and makers of the jPlayer media framework, Mark enjoys pushing the limits of the browser with HTML5 and JavaScript. Though a generalist at heart, Mark spends much of his time playing with web based media and real-time communications. A lover of all things audio, his passion often drives his work and is currently enjoying the challenge of taking audio ‘somewhere new’ with his Hyperaudio experiments.

Cole Gillespe | Zeit Online
Cole Gillespie is a JavaScript developer originating from deep within the North Carolina Appalachians. In recent years he has spent his time in Raleigh, North Carolina, working with various companies including Project Mastermind, National Geographic, CNN and IBM. He spends most of his free time playing music, hacking open source projects or trolling in IRC trying to keep up with the web’s rapid evolution.

Laurian Grindloc | BBC
Laurian followed his interest in the semantic web through a master in Computational Linguistics and several years of research into semantic navigation at Knowledge Media Institute (The Open University). For the past year, Laurian has been implementing applications using semantic web technologies at the technology innovation company Talis.

Nicola Hughes | Guardian
After academic excursions in the fields of Physics, Zoology, Anthropology and Journalism, Nicola started her media career at CNN in London. Whilst working as a Digital Media Producer, she started blogging and tweeting about data journalism (@DataMinerUK). She left CNN to join a data scraping start up, ScraperWiki, and to gain coding skills. She is now taking her skills, perspectives and start-up mojo into the newsroom for testing.

Dan Schultz | Boston Globe
Dan Schultz is a graduate student at the MIT Media Lab studying in the Information Ecology group. At the Lab he is a Research Associate at the Center for Civic Media and has learned how to make almost anything. Before coming to MIT Dan received a B.S. in Information Systems from Carnegie Mellon University, and was awarded a Knight News Challenge grant in 2007 to write about “Connecting People, Content, and Community.”

Through their tenure at the partner newsrooms in 2012, the fellows have been tasked with three things:

• To embed themselves within their partner newsrooms so that they become intimately familiar with the daily ebb and flow of some of the best newsrooms in the world
• To work in the open, in the spirit of Mozilla and the open-source community. That means blogging about their work and being active in communities outside their host newsroom as an advocate for open innovation.
• To release the code they create into the larger open-source and journalism communities. The goal is to benefit not only their host newsrooms but to make tools that benefit all of journalism and beyond.

Get more news, impressions, ideas from the Mozilla festival: Follow #mozfest on microblogs and the Mozilla Festival Blog.

Today we’re publishing our first edition of the The Do Not Track Field Guide. Based on interactions with developers from leading companies that support DNT today, The Do Not Track Field Guide contains case studies, tutorials and sample code. We’ve also included a background section on our view of what the debate over DNT is all about. We hope that the Guide inspires developers around the world to embrace the technology and also leads to subsequent editions with new tutorials and sample code.

 

How

We’ll host small teams at Mozilla’s global offices for four weeks at a time, giving them access to our people, tools and resources, so they can focus on building. We’re looking for playful, useful, original problem-solving applications and tools that make the Web a better place.

During the four week program, teams will work in-house alongside the Mozilla crew. You’ll receive mentorship and guidance from some of the brightest people around, allowing you to focus on bringing your product idea to life.

At the end of four weeks, you’ll have a minimum viable product ready to go out on the Open Web. And together we can decide on how to take this product forward.

What we offer

• The opportunity to work alongside the Mozilla crew in one of our offices
• Access to key Mozilla personnel, introductions to interesting people and industry leaders
• Regular mentorship sessions with experts on technology, scalability, security, marketing, community, and business strategy
• Financial support during the program
• Help with IT infrastructure (servers, software, etc.)
• A great coworking experience with plenty of fun & awesomeness!

What we look for

• The product fits into one of the predefined problem areas
• The product is developed with the traits that are important for the open Web
• The team has at least the kernel of a product (i.e. some working code, not only an idea)

The program runs on a rolling submission schedule with the first spots opening in August. Head over to the Mozilla Labs Web FWD site for more information and submit your application.

The add-on makes searching Twitter in Firefox a snap. You can search for #hashtags and @usernames by entering the searches directly into the Firefox Awesome Bar, and you’ll be taken to Twitter search results. Twitter Address Bar Search works with the latest version of Firefox for Windows, Mac OS X, Linux and even on Android!

Mozilla is continually exploring innovative ways to put users in control of their online experience. With the Twitter Address Bar Search add-on, Twitter leverages the extensible Mozilla Firefox platform to deliver an integrated social experience to hundreds of millions of Firefox users worldwide.

Visit the Firefox Add-ons gallery to try out the Twitter Address Bar Search add-on. If you aren’t a Firefox user, you can download the Mozilla Firefox with Twitter bundle.

Starting with Firefox 4, WebM videos encoded with 3D data will be displayed in high-quality stereoscopic 3D using NVIDIA 3D Vision hardware. 3D hardware has moved from movie theaters and into people’s homes through TVs, laptop and desktop machines. 3D video games are in wide use today. And consumer hardware that’s capable of capturing 3D photos and videos is starting to come onto the market. In fact, there are several thousand 3D videos available today on YouTube. And starting today YouTube will transcode and play these videos into the open WebM format with 3D for use with their HTML5 player. This feature is currently only available in Firefox 4. It’s our hope that other browsers will follow and add support for 3D HTML5 video as well.

This is part of our larger effort to bring open video to the Web. We’ve been glad to work with NVIDIA and YouTube on this project building the solution entirely on open standards like WebM and HTML5. Our hope is that by lowering the barrier for 3D video on the Web, we’ll see more interesting apps being build on open Web technologies.

Web O’ Wonder exhibits cool and creative ways to interact with the Web. The possibilities are unlimited, so get ready to explore the types of experiences created with modern Web technologies. This is just the beginning so check back often because we will add more demos to Web O’ Wonder each week.

In addition to the interactive demos, with Web O’ Wonder you can learn more about how each demo works, what technologies are used and check out behind the scenes video interviews with the creators.

You can read this blog post from Mozilla’s Technology Evangelist, Paul Rouget to learn more about Web O’ Wonder.