Major sites all over the internet have gone on strike due to SOPA and PIPA, the hot-button anti-piracy legislation. Experts expect strike to last 150 seconds, and agree this is a "near eternity" in internet time. Congress is about to pass what has been called the internet censorship bill, even though the vast majority of Americans are opposed. The Senate is scheduled to vote on its version of the internet censorship bill on Tuesday, January 24th, and unless there are 41 senators to voice their opposition to allowing the bill to proceed, it is expected to pass. Legislation called the PROTECT-IP Act (PIPA) in the Senate and the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in the House are purported to be a way to crack down on online copyright infringement. In reality the bill is much broader. It would empower governments and corporations to take down virtually any website, create new liabilities and uncertainties for web innovators, and make the web less safe. According to the varied and multitudinous reasons large numbers of sites and individuals are opposed to the bill, it betrays basic American tenets, such as free speech, prosperity, and national security. On top of all that, cybersecurity experts say it wouldn't stop copyright infringement. The legislation is backed and largely written by the MPAA, as they have said in media reports. They have also spent millions in lobbying dollars to pass this legislation. - SOPA Strike!
Join me and other sites like Reddit, MoveOn, Modzilla, TwitPic, cheezburger, Fail blog, Dailywh.at and more in showing that our own government is making a huge mistake in censoring the internet. The reason is because it's such a strong bill it could shut down sites as big as Twitter and Youtube... maybe even Facebook, Blogger, and Wordpress! When January 18th hits, I'm avoiding the internet for 24 hours. Will you do the same?
Also here is a list from "List of Those Expressing Concern With SOPA & PIPA", which include the top 30 websites against this bill: American Express Company, AOL, Discover, eBay, Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, Mozilla, PayPal, Reddit, Tumblr, Twitter, Wikipedia, Yahoo!, Zynga Game Network, Boing Boing, BuzzFeed, ClearBits, CloudFlare, ConsumerBell, Copyblogger, Creative Commons, Curse, Daily Kos, deviantART, Disqus, DreamHost, Dyn, Embedly, ESET, and 50 others!
Also on that list of major CEO's and big named people: Marc Andreessen (Netscape), Mitchell Baker (Mozilla Firefox), Sergey Brin (Google), Dennis Crowley (Foursquare, Dodgeball), Chad Dickerson (Etsy), Jack Dorsey (Twitter and Square), Caterina Fake (Flickr and Hunch), David Filo (Yahoo!), Reid Hoffman (LinkedIn, Paypal, Socialnet), Arianna Huffington (The Huffington Post), Chad Hurley (YouTube), and hundreds of others!
Currently, SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) is moving through the House of Representatives at a dangerous speed. The parent companies of many major news networks (FOX, CNN, CBS, ABC, NBC, and MSNBC) support this bill and refuse to draw attention to the bill in the hopes of no one realizing the dark side SOPA. It's working. While the majority of Americans oppose this bill, many Americans either have never heard of SOPA or have only heard the "good side" of SOPA. Google, Facebook, and Wikipedia are debating having a "blackout" to force the media to cover the story and raise awareness about this disgustingly under-reported bill. The sites would either make their sites unavailable for a length of time or redirect the site to one with an explanation of SOPA. Reddit has already scheduled its own "blackout" day, Jan. 18th and the decision has incredible support among its users, but this one website is not enough. This is a disgusting violation of free speech and will destroy the Internet as we know it. Keep the "WORLD" in the World Wide Web and show these sites that we are behind their decision to force media to cover SOPA! - Change.org
