As I'm sure many of you have heard, there are bills being proposed in Congress to change the Internet as we know it. Web sites will be regulated to ensure that copyrighted material isn't being transmitted, to the point where a web site can be eradicated out of existence, whether it's linking to copyrighted material or not. Wikipedia, one of the largest web sites in the world (based on visitor traffic), is blacking out their website until Thursday morning to protest and to raise awareness of this issue. Other websites I tried to go to this morning, such as Raw Story and Michael Moore's, are also taking part. Please call your Congressman and Senators to express your opposition. I don't know how effective it will be; many people called Congress to oppose the bailout, and look how that turned out. But I'd still call anyway.
Wikipedia has a great page with a lot of information and a FAQ on the SOPA and PIPA bills.
2 comments:
I saw that on Wikipedia, and called. California Senator Barbara Boxer, her office told me, is actually "sponsoring" it. All I could do was say that I was part of her "constituency," which was painful enough in itself.
I looked at the list of Senators and their positions on the bill, and I was a little surprised to see the amount of Democratic support behind it. I think more Repubs were opposed to it than Demos. It was probably due to many Democrats being bought by Hollywood, who is the main driver behind these bills. And to think that Boxer is considered one of the more progressive Senators.
As you probably know by now, the call-ins and the protests surrounding this bill were a success, and the bills have been tabled, for now. However, I was disturbed that at the same time, the government moved to shut down Megaupload, one of the top file-sharing sites on the net. Regardless of your views on file sharing, I think this was a clear message from the government to the anti-SOPA forces, that whether this law passes or not, we still have the power to shut down any website we wish, for whatever reason.
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