Tech giants say SOPA piracy bill is 'draconian'

Tech companies say Congress' anti-piracy bills are 'draconian' and 'deeply flawed.' NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- A proposed new bill intended to combat online piracy has sparked a giant backlash from big tech companies, including Google and Facebook, who say the proposals are far too strict and rife with unintended consequences. The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), which was introduced in the House of Representatives in late October, aims to crack down on copyright and trademark issues. Its targets include "rogue" foreign sites like torrent hub The Pirate Bay. Print Comment Protecting content is a worthy goal, but here's the flip side: Opponents say SOPA -- and a similar bill called the Protect IP Act that is making its way through the Senate -- effectively promotes censorship. If SOPA passes, copyright holders would be able to complain to law enforcement officials and get websites shut down.

The law would also force intermediaries like search engines and payment processors to withhold their services from targeted websites. That would be quite a change from the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which mandates that companies "act in good faith" to remove content that infringes on copyrights and other intellectual property laws. Google ( GOOG , Fortune 500) executive chairman Eric Schmidt called the bill "draconian" during a speech in Boston on Tuesday. Google and other tech behemoths -- AOL ( AOL ), eBay ( EBAY , Fortune 500), Facebook, LinkedIn ( LNKD ), Mozilla, Twitter, Yahoo ( YHOO , Fortune 500) and Zynga -- also lodged a formal complaint on Tuesday in the form of a letter sent to key Senate and House lawmakers. "We support the bills' stated goals," the letter reads. "Unfortunately, the bills as drafted would expose law-abiding U.S. Internet and technology companies to new uncertain liabilities [and] mandates that would require monitoring of web sites." The companies are asking Congress to "consider more targeted ways to combat foreign 'rogue' websites." SOPA's critics -- some of the Internet's most heavily trafficked sites -- launched an awareness campaign on Wednesday. Hundreds of sites adopted black "STOP CENSORSHIP" logos, including BoingBoing, Reddit and the Electronic Frontier Foundation. One site tried to annoy consumers into action. Blogging site Tumblr blacked out words in its content feeds, and a message at the top of users' dashboards read: "Stop The Law That Will Censor The Internet!" "Congress is holding hearings today and will soon pass a bill empowering corporations to censor the Internet unless you tell them no," Tumblr wrote in a post Wednesday, calling the bills "well-intentioned but deeply flawed." Meanwhile, SOPA has drawn support from groups including the Motion Picture Association of America and the Recording Industry Association of America, which say that online piracy leads to job loss. Proponents of the bill dismiss accusations of censorship. The legislation would "[prevent] those who engage in criminal behavior from reaching directly into the U.S. market," Judiciary Committee Chairman Lamar Smith, who introduced the bill, said in a statement Wednesday. "We cannot continue a system that allows criminals to disregard our laws."  

How to keep the power on during a storm

It took over two weeks for the millions who lost power in October's freak blizzard to get their electricity back. Burying power lines may help, but it costs a million dollars a mile. NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- October's freak blizzard knocked out power for over 2 million people in the Northeast. In Connecticut, the hardest hit state, all the power lines weren't fixed until just last week. Storms have always wreaked havoc on the power grid.

But thanks to new technology and a growing trend to bury power lines underground, utilities are hoping to both cut the number of people who lose power in a storm and the length of time they are in the dark. Print Comment The best way to make a power line more resistant to an outage is to bury it. In Connecticut, 90% of power outages are caused by falling tree limbs, said Connecticut Light and Power spokeswoman Katie Blint. Underground lines fix the tree problem. But there's a catch, says Connecticut Light and Power: It costs at least a million dollars a mile to bury an overhead power line. Connecticut Light and Power is a subsidiary of Northeast Utilities Company ( NU , Fortune 500). It's hard to get an estimate as to just how much it would cost nationwide -- there are over 3,000 utilities in the country. Often, they each use different technology from one another. The power struggle for Wyoming's wind In Connecticut alone, 75% of Connecticut Light and Power's 17,000 miles of line are above ground. At a million a mile, that's nearly $13 billion to put them all underground. "It's a very, very expensive proposition," said Jim Owen, spokesman for the Edison Electric Institute, the national utility trade association. "At the end of the day, customers would have to bear the price of it." And burying lines comes with its own problems. While fool-proof against falling trees, they are still subject to outages caused by moisture. And when they fail they are harder to find and fix. Still, spurred by greater reliability and a desire for better aesthetics, most towns nationwide now require power lines in new housing developments to be buried along with other utilities like phone, Internet, water and sewage systems. It's more expensive than running the lines above ground, said Owen, but not nearly as expensive as burying an existing system. Fortunately for customers, there are other technologies in the works that aim to make above-ground lines more resilient. As part of the smart grid revolution, interconnected sensors are being added to power lines. The sensors can both limit the number of homes affected by an outage and shorten the time it takes to get the power back on. Known as 'self-healing' technology, so-called smart grids employ devices such as a recloser, which can reclose the electric circuit and restore power to areas past a downed tree, said Ben Kellison, a smart grid analyst at GTM Research. 0:00 / 2:20 Making sense of the Smart Grid Reclosers have been around for over 40 years, said Kellison, but not in widespread deployment. Other devices can be helpful too. Line sensors can detect changes in electrical wave formations, indicating where blowing tree limbs are getting too close to the power line. Utilities can hopefully be alerted to a potential problem months in advance and send a crew out to clear the branches. Line sensors have also been around for a while, but what's now rapidly advancing is the analytical software necessary to alert the utility to the problem in advance. With this new technology, "The number of customers affected is going to change dramatically," said Kellison, "as is the time." But this all may take a while to roll out. Thanks to the number of different utilities out there, and that fact that they all use quite different technology, Kellison said these types of smart grid innovations will be gradually added to the electric grid over a period of one or two decades.  

Keystone pipeline delayed by Obama until 2013

Decision on Keystone oil sands pipeline delayed until 2013. Environmentalists hope it will scuttle the project. NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- Bowing to public pressure, the Obama administration said Thursday it will delay a decision on the controversial Keystone oil sands pipeline expansion until at least 2013. Citing concern over the proposed route through Nebraska's Sand Hills region and over the Ogallala Aquifer, the State Department said it needs more time to study the issues and look at possible alternative routes. Print Comment "Given the concentration of concerns regarding the environmental sensitivities of the current proposed route through the Sand Hills area of Nebraska, the Department has determined it needs to undertake an in-depth assessment of potential alternative routes in Nebraska," the State Department said in a statement.

The Nebraska legislature convened a special session last week with many state lawmakers calling for a change in the pipeline's course. Protesters encircle White House, demanding halt to pipeline project Based on previous pipeline permitting experience, the State Department said the review process "could be completed as early as the first quarter of 2013." In a separate statement, President Obama said he supported the State Department's move. "The final decision should be guided by an open, transparent process that is informed by the best available science and the voices of the American people," said Obama. The news set off a firestorm of comments from the pipeline's supporters and opponents, and shows just how political the issue has become. While the decision has been put off until after the presidential election, it will no doubt be seized upon by the president's supporters and opponents during the election season. House Speaker John Boehner criticized the delay. "More than 20,000 new American jobs have just been sacrificed in the name of political expediency. By punting on this project, the president has made clear that campaign politics are driving U.S. policy decisions -- at the expense of American jobs." However, the news was praised by environmentalists, who have been protesting the pipeline for months and hope the delay will ultimately lead to a scrapping of the plan altogether. "This is a major victory," said Daniel Kessler, spokesperson with Tar Sands Action. "It's a testament to the thousands of people who came out to protest in the streets, and we think the president responded to that." "We hope that the end result of the new review will show that the pipeline is not in the nation's best interest and it will be rejected," said Susan Casey-Lefkowitz, director of international programs at the Natural Resources Defense council. But TransCanada ( TRP ), the company that wants to build the $7 billion pipeline, showed no indication of scrapping the project, even though it previously said the added expense of trying to get new permits, plus the loss of customers who have signed up to take delivery of the oil, could lead the company to kill it altogether. "We remain confident Keystone XL will ultimately be approved," said Russ Girling, TransCanada's president and chief executive officer. "This project is too important to the U.S. economy, the Canadian economy and the national interest of the United States for it not to proceed." Indeed, the company confirmed it has already bought $1.7 billion worth of steel pipe. The 1,700-mile pipeline is supposed to take oil from Canada's oil sands region in Alberta to refineries on the U.S. Gulf Coast. 0:00 / 2:24 Lady roughnecks in North Dakota man-camps Environmentalists hated the project from the get-go, fearing the pipeline not only risks spills but would lock the U.S. into dependency on oil sands, a particularly dirty form of oil. Oil sands are just that -- oil mixed with sand. To get a useful type of crude, heat is used to separate the oil from the sand. The process results in anywhere from 5% to 30% more greenhouse gas emissions than extracting conventional oil would generate. There are also concerns that oil sands developments -- many of which look like giant open-pit strip mines -- decimate forests and pollute rivers and streams. Just this week the International Energy Agency warned that the world risks locking itself into dirtier forms of energy and will ultimately have to spend much more to clean itself up, unless more investments in renewable energy are made today. Nonetheless, the Obama administration was expected to approve the pipeline up until just a few weeks ago, largely on the grounds of energy security and economic development. IEA sees danger in rising oil, coal use But the intensity of the protests turned up the heat on the Obama administration, and put it in the uncomfortable position of having to choose between two important constituencies. Some saw Thursday's announcement as a chance to delay making that hard choice until after the upcoming presidential election. "This is a surprise to us and counter to our existing call that the approval was still likely and only the timing was in question," said Kevin Book, managing director of research at ClearView Energy Partners. "This does indeed suggest a political, not practical, choice to 'kick the can' into 2013." Pipeline supporters, including many in the business community, the construction trades, and nearly everyone in the oil industry, say the United States could use the 700,000 barrels a day the pipeline would carry. Many of the world's biggest oil companies, including ExxonMobil ( XOM , Fortune 500), Royal Dutch Shell ( RDSA ) and BP ( BP ), have been ramping up production from the oil sands and need a way to get it out. While oil sands crude might be dirtier than some other forms of oil, they say, at least it comes from Canada, where environmental and human rights rules are generally strict and enforced. Backers also said the pipeline would create 20,000 construction jobs in the short term and generate $5 billion in property tax revenue over the next century. "This decision is deeply disappointing and troubling," American Petroleum Institute President Jack Gerard said in a statement. "Whether it will help the president retain his job is unclear, but it will cost thousands of shovel-ready opportunities for American workers." But in highly visible protests over the last few weeks, critics had been picking apart the pipeline's promised benefits. The jobs number, they say, is actually closer to 5,000. One study from Cornell said the pipeline could actually cost jobs by hurting the development of alternative energy and allowing for the export of oil from the Midwest, driving up the cost of gasoline in that region. Opponents also questioned the validity of the State Department's approval process, noting that several lobbyists for the industry have close ties to the administration. In a letter to the State Department's inspector general last month, several lawmakers said they were uncomfortable with reports saying the firm hired by the State Department to conduct the environmental review for the pipeline also has a business relationship with TransCanada. The inspector general's office began a review of the approval process last week. 

Home prices

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- Home prices continued a winning streak in August, the fifth straight month of price gains, but remain lower on a year-over-year basis. A gauge of home prices featuring 20 major cities, the S&P/Case Shiller index, reported Tuesday that prices rose 0.2% in August but were still down 3.8% year over year. Print Comment "Even though the [year-over-year] rates are improving, national home prices are still below where they were a year ago," said David Blitzer, a spokesman for S&P. Overall, the market is treading water and there doesn't seem to be any reason to suspect that's going to change soon. "As long as the economy remains weak, foreclosures are still a problem and lending standards stay stringent, we're not going to see much movement in home prices," said Mike Larson, a real estate analyst for Weiss Research.

"You just haven't gotten yet the rocket fuel needed to send housing soaring again," he said. Among individual metro areas, Washington saw the biggest gain -- 1.6% in August. Detroit and Chicago were close behind at 1.4%. In the past 12 months, Washington prices have gone up 0.3%. In Detroit prices were up 2.4% since August 2010, more than any other area. The Atlanta metro area recorded the steepest decline, down 2.4% for the month. Year-over-year prices were off 6.3%. Minneapolis home prices recorded the worst 12-month drop of 8.5%. The home price report comes on the heels of changes in the Home Affordable Refinance Program (HARP) announced Monday by the Obama administration. The changes will enable many homeowners to refinance high-interest mortgages more easily, making their monthly payments more affordable. The plan should enable some to avoid default. Ed Mermelstein, a New York-based real estate attorney, broker and developer, doubts that the HARP changes will have much impact on home prices or sales. "The economy and jobs have to come back. That's what's going to help the housing market," he said. Larson pointed out that even if they work as planned, HARP's main focus is helping existing homeowners stay in their homes; it won't spur new sales. Newport said he thinks that housing market weakness will continue improving. How to rescue the housing market: foreclosures "The key reason is that more distressed homes are coming onto the market and will be selling," he said. "That tends to drag home prices down." Fiserv, which provides real estate financial analytics to industry, is projecting a further home price decline of 3.6% through the end of June 2012. If that forecast comes true, it would mean home prices will plumb a new, post-bubble bottom over the next nine months, down 34% from the mid-2006 peak. 

Bernanke doesn't get treated 'ugly' in Texas

Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- Take that Rick Perry! Ben Bernanke headed down to Texas to rally the troops Thursday, and didn't get treated so "ugly" after all. The Federal Reserve Chairman spoke to soldiers at Fort Bliss, offering up tips to improve their job prospects and personal finances. His speech -- along with a question-and-answer session -- came about three months after Perry, the Texas governor and a Republican presidential candidate, mildly threatened Bernanke and called him "almost treasonous." Print Comment "If this guy prints more money between now and the election, I dunno what y'all would do to him in Iowa, but we would treat him pretty ugly down in Texas," Perry said back in August. According to CNN's El Paso affiliate KFOX, Bernanke greeted about 250 soldiers before sunrise after they flew home from Iraq.

He was also given a tour of one of the base's training centers, which offers classes in financial planning. Bernanke urged soldiers to take advantage of any available training programs to boost their job skills and personal finance know-how, and upon leaving the military, to use the G.I. Bill to fund a college education. "While you are in the military, take advantage of training opportunities," Bernanke said in his prepared remarks. "Many specific skills learned in the military -- nursing and healthcare, mechanics, computer programming, police and security work -- transfer to civilian jobs." Bernanke's comments are part of a push in Washington to help America's military. Veterans from the recent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have a 12.1% unemployment rate, well above the national 9% average. Overall, 240,000 Americans who served in the military from 2001 on are currently unemployed. 0:00 / 01:55 Bernanke's mixed outlook in 2 min Earlier this week, the Senate voted to take up a bill aimed at helping unemployed veterans. The bill gives employers tax credits of up to $5,600 for hiring those who have been unemployed longer than six months. It would also give employers a tax credit of up to $9,600 for hiring long-unemployed disabled veterans. Bernanke didn't delve into that topic as part of his speech Thursday, and also spoke very little of monetary policy, other than to explain to the soldiers what the Federal Reserve's role in the economy is. "Supporting job creation is half of our marching orders, so to speak; the other half is controlling inflation," he said, adding that while high unemployment remains a challenge, he at least expects inflation to remain low for the "foreseeable future." Bernanke chides Occupy Wall Street misconceptions Europe's debt crisis also remains a threat to U.S. economic growth, Bernanke said. "I don't think we'd be able to escape the consequences of a blow-up in Europe," he said. Bernanke has recently borne heated criticism from not just Perry but most of the Republican presidential candidates. Mitt Romney has said he would be "looking for somebody new" to run the Fed, while former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and businessman Herman Cain have pledged to fire Bernanke. Meanwhile, Texas Congressman Ron Paul has been saying for years he wants to dismantle the Fed altogether. On Thursday, a marine in the audience asked Bernanke to respond to those criticisms, urging him to explain what a world without the Fed would look like. "It's not a very realistic proposal," Bernanke said. "Essentially, every country in the world has a central bank." 

Senate passes jobs bill to help veterans

Sen. Jon Tester, a Montana Democrat, speaks to veterans and lawmakers about his jobs proposal. WASHINGTON (CNNMoney) -- Heading into Veterans Day, the Senate unanimously passed a bill to help unemployed veterans seeking jobs as well as federal contractors facing a new tax burden in 2013. The Senate voted 95-to-0 Thursday to pass the first and so far only piece of President Obama's jobs package to get out of the chamber. The House is expected to take up the bill and pass it next week.

Print Comment Lawmakers are touting the bill as a bipartisan jobs creator that is fully paid for and would even reduce federal deficits by $2 billion over the next decade, according to the Congressional Budget Office. "The bills won't solve our jobs crisis," said Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell on Thursday. "But this attempt at bipartisanship has been used to help get them over the finish line and represents our best shot at making progress on jobs in the economy." The bill gives employers tax credits of up to $5,600 for hiring veterans who have been unemployed longer than six months. It would also give employers a tax credit of up to $9,600 for hiring long-unemployed disabled veterans. The October unemployment rate for veterans who left the military after 2001 was 12.1%, leaving about 240,000 veterans out of work, according to the White House. The measure to help veterans is a small piece of President Obama's job package. "Let's work together to get this bill passed, because it's the least we can do for those whom we owe so much," said Sen. Jon Tester, a Montana Democrat and sponsor of the veterans' measure. Bernanke doesn't get treated 'ugly' in Texas The bill also expands an education and jobs retraining program for unemployed veterans. And it creates a new project that directs the Labor Department to figure out ways for veterans to use their specialized training to get licenses in different fields in the civilian work force. Republican Jim DeMint of South Carolina was the only lawmaker who voted against the amendment adding the veterans measure to the bill, saying he didn't think the government programs for veterans work. But, he voted in favor of then overall bill with the veteran tax credits on final passage. Maine Republican Olympia Snowe voted "present" on the bill. The Senate plans to pay for the tax credits by keeping special fees that the Department of Veterans Affairs charges veterans for guaranteeing mortgages at current levels. Those fees had been scheduled to get cheaper for veterans. By keeping the fees at current levels, the federal government can tap that revenue stream. The bill also repeals a George W. Bush-era tax accountability law that would have allowed the federal, state and local governments to withhold 3% of contractor pay, allowing those dollars to be applied as a credit toward federal income taxes. That law was supposed to take effect on Jan. 1, 2013. 0:00 / 1:30 Homeless vet starts small business Congress initially passed the withholding requirements back in 2006 to ensure that the government collected all taxes owed by contractors. Big business groups, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, have been pushing to repeal the measure. The House overwhelmingly passed that bill last month with a vote of 405-16. The cost of repealing the tax withholding measure is about $11 billion. Congress would pay for the repeal by changing a part of the new health care reforms. The government would redefine who is eligible for federal help under new health care reforms, making it more difficult for some to qualify for Medicaid or subsidized health care coverage. The bill raises the threshold level to qualify for government help by including nontaxable Social Security benefits, as well as the taxable portion, as income. The White House issued a statement on Thursday supporting the measure, saying it would "reduce unemployment and ensure that our veterans leave the military with the tools they need to succeed in the civilian workforce." 

IEA sees danger in rising oil, coal use

International Energy Agency says the world is embarking on oil and coal projects and will 'lock itself into an insecure, inefficient and high-carbon energy system.' NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- The International Energy Agency warned Wednesday that the world faces serious dangers from global warming unless it radically alters its planned investments in new oil and coal facilities. Under current policies, oil use will rise 14% by 2035 and coal use will surge 65%, mostly from the developing world. Print Comment The resulting greenhouse gas emissions over the next 25 years will be equal to three-quarters of the total emissions from the previous 110 years combined, and will cause a 3.5-degree Celsius (6.3 Fahrenheit) rise in global temperatures, well above the 2% increase set as a target by global leaders. "Without a bold change of policy direction, the world will lock itself into an insecure, inefficient and high-carbon energy system," IEA said in its annual World Energy Outlook. "Governments need to introduce stronger measures to drive investment in efficient and low-carbon technologies." It's a particularly strong warning from an agency whose main task is to coordinate global stockpiles of oil in developed countries, in case there's a supply disruption.

It also comes at a pertinent time for the energy debate in the United States. Critics of the proposed $7 billion Keystone pipeline expansion, slated to carry oil from Canada's oil sands to ports on the U.S. Gulf Coast, are using this argument as a key point in their opposition to the project. IEA also said that unless countries in the Middle East and North Africa invest $100 billion a year over the next five years in new oil infrastructure, the world could see oil prices jump to over $150 a barrel "in the near term." Investments of that magnitude will be a challenge for many of those countries, especially in light of the disruptions and social spending promises made during the Arab Spring uprisings. Keystone oil sands pipeline construction in doubt The report noted that while oil use is expected to jump 14%, actual cars on the road are expected to double -- again, mostly from demand in the developing world. Those new cars are expected to be more efficient than today's models helping to curtail the rise in oil consumption. Still, the world will need to produce 99 million barrels of oil a day to meet that new demand, up from 87 million currently. IEA says that 90% of that new supply will have to come from Middle East and North African countries. Underestimating technology's impact: Forecasting agencies like the IEA are often criticized by those in the industry for making conservative predictions and underplaying the role of technology. Indeed, many in the oil industry argue that new technologies enabling the development of shale oil, as well as deepwater drilling and other enhanced technologies, will allow for much greater oil production from places like Canada, Brazil and the United States. Similarly, those in the solar industry predict their panels will be cost competitive with coal in the next few years, facilitating a massive shift away from fossil fuels and towards renewable energy. But IEA does not see things that way. The agency is calling for renewables to make up just 18% of world energy supply by 2035, up from 13% today. 0:00 / 2:15 Small town, big oil: The heart of a boom But it's clear IEA wants to see more renewables. Although the agency didn't call for specific policies, typically "stronger measures to drive investment" would include things that make fossil fuels more expensive so renewables can compete, or mandates to use more renewable power. Making fossil fuels more expensive could be done by enacting a tax on carbon emissions or laws limiting their release. Europe has such policies, as does Japan and, more recently, Australia. Even China and India have enacted strong mandates for renewable energy use. Land a job in a North Dakota boomtown Policies in the United States to drive investments in renewables include a 30% tax credit for wind and solar projects and a mandate requiring greater fuel efficiency from vehicles and the use of more biofuel. The Obama administration, along with some Democrats in congress, has been trying to pass laws limiting the amount of carbon that can be emitted and a mandate requiring utilities to buy a certain percentage of their power from renewable sources like wind and solar. The idea is that by providing a market for renewables, the price will come down as they reach economies of scale. But those efforts have been foiled by Republicans and some Democrats in Congress, who argue it would raise energy prices too much and that the technologies will be adopted when they can compete in an open market.