DIY Computing Supports the Protest Against SOPA and PIPA
January 18th is literally unprecedented in the history of the internet.
It brings together large companies and small ones in protest of an act by the United States government. Such unity has not been possible until now.
SOPA and PIPA, if nothing else, have built unity among website owners, bloggers, and big business such as Reddit, Twitter, and volunteer groups such as Electronic Frontier Foundation, and Wikipedia, brought them all together in a way that nothing else could..
If you do nothing else today in protest of SOPA and PIPA
CALL YOUR CONGRESSMAN!!
Thanks to Wikipedia for the following explanation!
Tell them you are their constituent, and you oppose SOPA and PIPA.
Why?
SOPA and PIPA put the burden on website owners to police user-contributed material and call for the unnecessary blocking of entire sites.
Small sites won’t have sufficient resources to defend themselves. Big media companies may seek to cut off funding sources for their foreign competitors, even if copyright isn’t being infringed.
Foreign sites will be blacklisted, which means they won’t show up in major search engines. SOPA and PIPA build a framework for future restrictions and suppression.
In a world in which politicians regulate the Internet based on the influence of big money, Wikipedia — and sites like it — cannot survive.
Congress says it’s trying to protect the rights of copyright owners, but the “cure” that SOPA and PIPA represent is worse than the disease.