The web's a little weird today, huh? Looking around, stuff you're normally used to seeing just plain isn't where it's supposed to be. Weird.
Congress is fighting to pass a bill called "SOPA," the Stop Online Piracy Act. Lots and lots of people think this is a terrible idea. Many of these motivated people believe this so strongly that they're going to "black out" the internet in protest. Who's on board for this digital strike?
- Wikipedia
- I Can Has Cheezburger network
- WordPress
- MoveOn.org
- Mozilla
- TwitPic
- BoingBoing
- Minecraft.net
- Riot Games
- Epic Games
- 38 Studios
- Red 5 Studios
- Google will be changing their homepage
That's some pretty big sites (and a big problem for any students who have a paper due on Thursday) to abandon their users and traffic for a political point — even for twelve hours (the idea is that this is supposed to go from 8AM EST to 8PM PST). Why do they hate this piece of legislation so?
SOPA would give both the government and major corporations the power to shut down entire websites accused of copyright infringement with neither a trial nor a traditional court hearing. The legislation is aggressively backed by Hollywood movie studios and major record labels, along with several major news providers, including Fox News and NBC-Universal, which have largely shied away from coverage of the bill.
The burst of opposition to SOPA and its Senate companion, Protect IP (or PIPA, for short), has caught many lawmakers, who thought they were endorsing a fairly non-controversial anti-piracy bill with strong corporate support, off guard. Senate co-sponsors of the bill regrouped on Tuesday, huddling in the Capitol with major industry backers of the bill.
What will the lawmakers do now? The entire web awaits.
"Hang on, wait one sec," you might be asking. "Komplicated's online! Where's your black out and strike, pal?" To which we say: this is the Black site, we were already "Blacked out," and a Black person that goes on strike is normally a Black person who loses a job.
We'll be at work, even though we will say this: stop SOPA.
[Source: Geeksugar, SOPA Strike]