January 18, 2012

2012Anthony Gonsalves, Indian composer and educator (born 1927)^[†]

Anthony Prabhu Gonsalves was an Indian musical composer, music arranger and teacher. He was popularised as a lead character in the 1977 hit, Amar Akbar Anthony, played by Amitabh Bachchan, was named after him, especially with the song, "My Name Is Anthony Gonsalves".

2012Georg Lassen, German captain (born 1915)^[†]

Georg Lassen was a German U-boat commander during World War II. He was a Watch Officer on U-29 at the outbreak of the war and later the skipper of the U-160 and recipient of the Knight’s Cross.

2012Yuri Rasovsky, American playwright and producer, founded The National Radio Theater of Chicago (born 1944)^[†]

Yuri Rasovsky was an American writer and producer working in radio drama in the United States.

2012More than 115,000 websites engage in an online protest against the Stop Online Piracy Act and the Protect IP Act in the US.[citation needed] The websites involved viewed the laws as infringing on the right to free speech and many of them temporarily shut down in protest.^[†]

On January 18, 2012, a series of coordinated protests occurred against two proposed laws in the United States Congress—the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the PROTECT IP Act (PIPA). These followed smaller protests in late 2011. Protests were based on concerns that the bills, intended to provide more robust responses to copyright infringement arising outside the United States, contained measures that could possibly infringe online freedom of speech, websites, and Internet communities. Protesters also argued that there were insufficient safeguards in place to protect sites based upon user-generated content.