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Tuesday, January 17, 2012

You Can Drop the SOPA Here

We're not in prison, so you can feel free to drop the SOPA. You hear that, Congress? DROP THE SOPA.

Enough with the lame jokes. I know you're at least vaguely interested in using the Internet, as you wouldn't be reading this otherwise. Maybe you just pop on once or twice a week to check your Facebook or maybe you spend five hours of your nine-hour work day surfing in ten-minute blocks, I can't tell that much, but what I can tell you is that SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) and PIPA (PROTECT-IP Act) would probably kill whatever you're doing.

To take a large topic and sift it into a very simple statement, either of these Acts would block "objectionable" websites. By "objectionable" I don't mean weird random sites like Chicks and Cows or Five Year Plan to Getting Megan Fox, I mean Wikipedia, I mean I Can Haz Cheezburger, DeviantArt, anything that might have copyrighted content, however altered, or even link to copyrighted content. By the way, about everything is copyrighted.

To quote Stop American Censorship:
The US state department constantly speaks out against internet censorship in other countries. Pressure them to speak out against America’s new domestic censorship system.

Tomorrow, a long list of websites will be going black in protest (including those listed above here). If you have your own website, you may consider doing the same. Maybe warning a couple people. I'll be hiding my blog and my Facebook in the morning.

Tomorrow may be the most productive work day in a decade. It may be a day that changes how the government looks at the Internet. Or it may just be a day when we remember how to play Solitaire. If you've got the time (and without Wikipedia, you just might) drop Congress a note. You can do that here, if you want. They've even got one written out for you.

Here's to fighting censorship,
and here's to slapping Congress on the butt with a wet towel.

DROP THE SOPA!

courtesy of http://go-devil-dante.deviantart.com

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