Earlier this week information security vendor Kaspersky Lab announced that it would withdraw from the Business Software Alliance (BSA) next month because of the group’s support for the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) SOPA, for those who don’t know, is legislation pending in the U.S. House of Representatives whose purpose is: “To promote prosperity, creativity, entrepreneurship, and innovation by combating the theft of U.S. property and for other purposes.”

Eugene Kaspersky, blogged about his reasons for his company withdrawing BSA. He noted that the law will require that anybody infringing on U.S copyrights will be “cut off from the Internet by all search engines, ISPs, credit systems and other levers of control, without exception.”

Kaspersky objects to the fact that this legislation would impose American copyright enforcement laws beyond its own borders via its domination of the Internet, while doing nothing to protect the copyrights of non-Americans.

He also objects to the broad definition of copyright infringement and its potential for abuse, a notion that many other critics have voiced.

“Copyright infringement” is understood in its broadest sense here: an amateur movie which includes quotations from a copyright-protected script or soundtrack would qualify, so would a home movie filmed while Kung Fu Panda played on a TV screen in the background. Some more nice examples here. Any use of any ‘intellectual property’ object is regarded as a violation resulting in a blog – or even an entire web resource – being closed down.

If we accept this law, hundreds of thousands of lawyers will suddenly appear out of the woodwork because almost any website can be accused of copyright infringement! This law will lead to major legalized extortion.

Critics of SOPA, like Kaspersky, believe that the legislation will lead to broad censorship by aggressive copyright enforcers. And so Kaspersky Lab is withdrawing from the BSA out of protest for its support for SOPA.

Meanwhile, another vendor has joined a different consortium also in an effort to combat network censorship. This morning network security vendor Websense announced that it was joining the Global Network Initiative (GNI), an organization established “to protect and advance freedom of expression and privacy in the ICT [Information and Communication Technology] sector.”

Websense has been outspoken in recent months about its efforts to keep its network filtering technology out of the hands of governments that would use it to censor and spy on citizens. This issue has been in the news in recent months because of revelations that the Syrian government was using Blue Coat filtering technology in its efforts to shut down anti-government protests. In response to that news, Websense recently posted that it dealt with a similar issue in 2009 when it discovered that a Yemeni ISP had somehow acquired Websense technology and was using it to censor the Internet. Websense disabled its software remotely to prevent the censorship from continuing.

In its statement on this issue, Websense wrote:

American software companies should take strong measures to prevent the misuse of their technologies where it would be harmful to the public good. And it’s long overdue for American technology companies to step forward and address this problem.

Now Websense has taken another step to raise awareness about this by joining the GNI, essentially agreeing that it will abide by the GNI’s principals to promote an open and free global Internet.

Current HP CEO Mark Hurd has changed things up. First he named Marius Haas, a rising star at HP who had spent the previous four years overseeing the absorption of HP acquisitions, as ProCurve’s new senior vice president and general manager. Then Hurd and Haas snapped up the well-regarded wireless LAN vendor Colubris, giving ProCurve instant WLAN cred. Before the Colubris deal, ProCurve’s WLAN strategy was built upon an OEM partnership with Motorola.

Word soon came down from above. The incentives that HP had long offered to sales representatives who sold Cisco gear along with HP servers and storage were off the table. ProCurve products were the new priority.

Then last month ProCurve announced its first purpose-built data center switches. ProCurve executives made it clear while briefing reporters and analysts about these new switches that the incentives HP sales reps had for selling Cisco products were long gone. HP would be bringing the full might of its data center presence to bear on its ProCurve strategy. Enterprises could now expect HP sales engineers to offer packages of HP servers, storage, switches, software and services. Quite a proposition.

Of course, none of this has been happening in a vacuum. Cisco hasn’t been sitting still. For a couple years now, Cisco has made it clear that it intends to conquer all things data center as well. It has invested more than $1 billion in rolling out its new Nexus switch line. It has unleashed a barrage of new data center management software and services, labeled Data Center 3.0. And rumors continue to buzz about “California,” Cisco’s much anticipated entry into the blade server market.

So what happens next? It’s safe to say this battle will result in some acquisitions as each company tries to add some weapons to its arsenal.  Allan Leinwand at GigaOM recently suggested a whole bunch of acquisition targets for HP.  For instance, he suggested that HP snap up Arista Networks, Blade Network Technologies, or Force10 Networks in order to beef up its 10/100 gigabit Ethernet portfolio. For storage optimization, he suggested someone like DataDomain.  He said HP should expand into WAN optimization and application delivery, by picking up someone like Blue Coat Systems or Zeus Technology. He also suggested HP target one of the emerging cloud computing specialists.

Meanwhile, Ashlee Vance at the New York Times blogged that Cisco is hoarding cash, leading many to speculate that a flurry of acquisitions is on the horizon.  Vance says that Cisco CEO John Chambers is looking to strike next in the consumer electronics market with the $30 billion in cash it has on hand right now. But enterprise vendors are also rumored targets. Given Cisco’s strong investment in expanding its data center footprint, I think it will spend some of that money on vendors who will help it make war on HP. The EMC rumors just won’t go away, for instance. Last year I heard some whispers that Cisco might make a smaller deal for network management software vendor SolarWinds, but I haven’t heard much about such a deal lately. I’ve seen speculation that Cisco might also target VMware, which it already owns a small stake in. That would be a huge deal, but why would EMC sell it? VMware is a big performer for it. Cisco might buy EMC just so it can have VMware, but the price would be steep.

Once the dust settles over the acquisition blitz, what happens next? I just read a great blog post by Christopher Hoff (hat tip to IDC’s Abner Germanow) which offers a great overview on where all of this is going. For instance, Cisco isn’t really getting into the server business, he says.  Instead, the so-called blade server Cisco is rumored to be working on is a natural outgrowth of the convergence of computing, where storage, servers and switches are becoming more tightly integrated into one infrastructure that supports virtualization and cloud computing.  He writes:

My point is that what Cisco is building is the natural by-product of converged technologies with an approach that deserves attention.  It *is* unified computing.  It’s a solution that includes integrated capabilities that otherwise customers would be responsible for piecing together themselves…and that’s one of the biggest problems we have with disruptive innovation today: integration.

I imagine HP plans to travel down this road as well. Indeed, this should be a very interesting year.

It sure sounds like it from where I sit sometimes. Shamus has a piece where he reports on how streaming Olympics video will drain corporate bandwidth, and what some IT departments are doing (or not doing) to curb bottlenecks. Talking to Blue Coat and Cisco yesterday, I felt privy to some evil conspiracy: Not only do they sell equipment that helps IT manage massive influxes, but they’re helping create and send through all that pesky HD content. Where’s their compassion for the common man?

As if this was not bad enough already, Tallulah David, who does PR for Merritt Group, pointed me to another scary Olympic angle on SOPHOS labs’ security blog: Ne’er-do-wells tapping into the Olympic excitement to spread exploits through Olympic-themed trojans and even legitimate news agencies like the AFP, with many of their partners falling victim to a SQL injection attack.

Even Beijing National Stadium, the site of the opening ceremonies and one of the most advanced venues I’ve ever seen, suffered a Blue Screen of Death during its critical moment in the spotlight.

And this doesn’t even touch all the non-technical scrutiny the networking profession has received based on China’s massive Internet filtering and firewalling project. Why can’t IT just cheer for Team USA, or Team China or India or Britain, in relative peace for once? Is that too much to ask?