Stop SOPA

Where's reddit? Where's Boing Boing? Where's Cheezburger? Where's Wikipedia? Where's Fark? Where's xkcd? Where's Miss Cellania?

A large part of the internet is on strike today to highlight the dangers of the Stop Online Piracy Act (and the related bill called PIPA) now before Congress; the vote is scheduled for January 24th. You can read the full text of the bill here. The result of the bill, if passed, would be to destroy the internet as we know it. Boing Boing explains the effects succinctly:

Boing Boing could never co-exist with a SOPA world: we could not ever link to another website unless we were sure that no links to anything that infringes copyright appeared on that site. So in order to link to a URL on LiveJournal or WordPress or Twitter or Blogspot, we'd have to first confirm that no one had ever made an infringing link, anywhere on that site. Making one link would require checking millions (even tens of millions) of pages, just to be sure that we weren't in some way impinging on the ability of five Hollywood studios, four multinational record labels, and six global publishers to maximize their profits.

But it's not just entertainment for you and me that is threatened.

Big Content haven't just declared war on Boing Boing and Reddit and the rest of the "fun" Internet: they've declared war on every person who uses the net to publicize police brutality, every oppressed person in the Arab Spring who used the net to organize protests and publicize the blood spilled by their oppressors, every abused kid who used the net to reveal her father as a brutalizer of children, every gay kid who used the net to discover that life is worth living despite the torment she's experiencing, every grassroots political campaigner who uses the net to make her community a better place -- as well as the scientists who collaborate online, the rescue workers who coordinate online, the makers who trade tips online, the people with rare diseases who support each other online, and the independent creators who use the Internet to earn their livings.

While I'm not tech-savvy enough to disable my entire website temporarily (I use a hosting service), there will be no new content until the strike is over. While there's not much else to read on the internet today, check out these links and educate yourself about the SOPA bill. And then take action.

• House takes Senate's bad Internet censorship bill, tries making it worse


• Protect The Internet


• SOPA: Hollywood Finally Gets A Chance to Break the Internet


• SOPA on OpenCongress


• PIPA on OpenCongress

Please go to Stop American Censorship to add your name to the many who oppose these bills.

Get Involved

• /r/sopa


• List of companies that have expressed support for SOPA or PIPA.


• List of tech companies, and their contact info, that have expressed support for SOPA or PIPA.


• List of companies that have expressed concern with SOPA and PIPA.


• Take Action Checklist at Stop American Censorship.


• Contact Your Representative with info and a widget to find them by EFF and Wired for Change.


• Directory of Representatives


• Senators of the 112th Congress


• Helpful info on making phone calls to your Senator or Representative.


• SOPAOpera.org keeps track of where your Congressmembers stand on PROTECT-IP and SOPA.

Thank you!