HackThisSite on the blackouts against SOPA/PIPA

Saturday, January 21, 2012

HackThisSite on the blackouts against SOPA/PIPA

Less than 24 hours after the SOPA/PIPA blackout protest, the effects are already quite visible: 19 Senators have thus far dropped support for PIPA; 8 million people used Wikipedia’s utility to look up their elected officials’ contact information; Google collected 4.5 million petition signatures only halfway through the protest; other websites invoked hundreds of thousands more people into action; and Jon Stewart laid into Congress on the absurdity of their actions with SOPA.

However, the fight to protect information and Internet freedom is far from over. It is quite saddening that, on the very same day of the protest, the United States Supreme Court ruled that Congress can re-copyright public domain works, and not even 24 hours later MegaUpload was shut down. SOPA and PIPA are still not dead, and PRO-IP is very much an existing law that is not only very similar to SOPA and PIPA, but is also very much abused like SOPA and PIPA likely will be.

Until Congress understands that neither bad-bill delays nor any amount of Big Content lobby money will silence those with legitimate, real concerns, everyone must continue to inundate their Congressmen with phone calls, E-Mails, letters, and town hall visits to make their voice heard: Do Not Censor The Internet.