SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) continues to make waves as this controversial bill continues to cycle through the U.S. government threatening approval. The bill masquerades around as a safeguard against piracy of intellectual property over the internet, when in fact it’s a bill that essentially puts the power of censorship in the hands of the government, big media corporations, and anyone with enough money to lobby one way or another.
Jimmy Wales, co-founder of Wikipedia and Wikia (formerly Wikicities) recently proposed the idea of an internet blackout, where supporters around the globe would shut down their websites to speak out against the unethical censorship power this bill proposes to give to the government. He said that, in hopes of sending a strong message, that in the event of SOPA passing, Wikipedia’s English site would shut down all around the globe, allowing no one access. A poll on Wikipedia showed that 87% of the users are in support of the proposed blackout. Many big names are on board with the internet blackout and against SOPA (and it’s congressional counterpart PIPA) including Google, Facebook PayPal, Wikipedia, Twitter, Amazon, LinkedIn, Mozilla, AOL, eBay, Yahoo!, IAC and more.
These big name companies have formed a coalition against dangerous legislation, known as the NetCoalition. They release the following infographic explaining the differences between SOPA, PIPA, and the much more widely supported OPEN act.
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 continues to make waves as this controversial bill continues to cycle through the U.S. government threatening approval. The bill m){kind=link}
Does anyone know how long this black out would last? I think it should last until they overturn it if they do pass it through. Do you know how many people in government alone this would effect and make them think twice? I like the idea because regular people can do with out the internet for quite awhile. Thank you for the heads up in case this does happen I’ll know why.
It actually happened last month. So its already passed. This post is from the day before.
When is this supposed to happen or when will we know if the bill passes? Don’t be surprised if they try and get it passed through in the middle of the night on a special holiday again like they have the past two at least that I know about. Watch for it on Easter Sunday to go through when you wouldn’t expect anybody to be working. They are a sneaky bunch anymore.
It has been stopped for now. More information can be found here.
I think that an internet blackout would be great if this happens to go through because the government controls far to much these days then they should anyway and if we give them more power to control what we do or what we say then we might as well be living in old Russia. I don’t like dictators and I believe that is the opinion of the majority. Thank you for this information.