Today my blog has joined with thousands of other sites that are going dark in protest of SOPA & PIPA legislation, both of which have the scary possibility of destroying freedom of expression on the internet.
Of course since my site is dark you can't read this... but, if you're in the future now, you can take a look at what Blogography looked like today by clicking on this link (thanks to Zachary Johnson for the awesome code!).
If you are so inclined, you can read more about SOPA & PIPA here.
If you would prefer not to get into the gory details, suffice to say that SOPA & PIPA are trying to do a good thing (crack down on internet piracy) badly (by destroying the internet). It basically boils down to politicians sucking up to lobbyists at the expense of the people they are supposed to be serving.
I absolutely support fighting piracy. I work with industries which have been damaged by people stealing their property, and I know the havoc it causes. So when idiot politicians who have been duped (or bought) to defend SOPA & PIPA are saying "we're fighting to save American jobs!"... they're actually talking about people like me. But they're not speaking for people like me. Because I would never support this kind of stupid shit which would do nothing to actually stop piracy. Ultimately SOPA & PIPA are more about censorship than justice, and I'll have no part of it.
The only internet that matters is a free and open internet.
Anything less, for better or worse, is unacceptable, and nobody should be given the power to change that.
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Amen to that.
I wasn’t too happy to find out that one of my Senator’s was a co-sponsor of PIPA. I couldn’t even contact him to express my displeasure. Well, not tonight anyway.
I wonder who is running against him next election?
AMEN!
(That code was kickass!)
Agreed. Well said, Dave. And very cool code indeed, I saw it yesterday.
I was so happy to see the amount of support (I took my blog offline in protest as well) on Wednesday. So happy to see them retreating from this.