Stop Online Piracy Act is a bill that was introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives in October 2011 by Lamar Smith (R-TX). This Act would allow the Department of Justice and copyright holders to seek court orders against websites accused of copyright infringement that would prevent online ad networks and payment facilitators from doing business with those websites. Opponents in this bill believe that this is Internet censorship. Google co-founder Sergey Brin, Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, PayPal co-founder Elon Musk, and Yahoo! co-founder Jerry Yang oppose the bill. Their letter will appear as a paid ad in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and other newspapers.

A consortium of investors that are being led by Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) and Silver Lake are submitting a plan to buy a minority stake in Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ:YHOO). TPG Capital is another company that will be making a proposal for Yahoo! Both of these proposals would lead to taking a stake of around 20% of the company.

Carol Bartz has been fired from Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ:YHOO) by Chairman Roy Bostock over the phone. Yahoo! EVP and CFO Tim Morse has been appointed the interim CEO as Bartz departs. Shortly after the firing took place, Yahoo! co-founders David Filo and Jerry Yang sent out the memo below:

Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ:YHOO) co-founder David Filo is rumored to be buying the National Basketball Association (NBA) team New Orleans Hornets from former owner George Shinn. Filo, 44, is a New Orleans native. He is the 356th richest person in America as of right now and he wouldn’t be the only person associated with Yahoo! to own an NBA team.

Chief Yahoo and Yahoo! co-founder David Filo announced last week that he met with New York Governor David Paterson and Senator Chuck Schumer.  Yahoo! announced plans to build one of the most energy-efficient data centers in the world.  Data centers are the top source of energy consumption at Yahoo! so the announcement is very significant.

The data center will be powered by hydroelectric power from Niagara Falls. About 90% of the energy will be used to power servers.  The industry average is 50%.  The new data center will be based in Lockport, New York.  The company aims to have an annual average power usage effectiveness at 1.1 or better.  The design of the building will be based on the Yahoo! Computing Coop since it looks similar to a chicken coop.

About two years ago, Yahoo! started building their own data centers.  Their facility in Washington is powered by zero-carbon wind and other hydroelectric sources.  Yahoo! is even aiming to reduce carbon intensity of their data centers by at least 40% by 2014.

[via Yodel Anecdotal]