Wikipedia and a host of other large sites like Reddit, The Cheezburger Network and BoingBoing are going dark later today, January 18 to protest a highly controversial bill that, if passed, could break the very fabric of the internet as we know it. The bill, called Stop Online Piracy Act, is designed to curtail piracy and help intellectual property enforcement through various means, which include blocking the site from being accessed by people in the United States. The bill as it currently stands provide overly broad mechanisms for enforcement of copyright would summarily threaten websites where content is submitted by users, and websites where there are broad swaths of communities who routinely share content.
If you’re anything like us, you like keeping the internet open and free for everyone. That’s why if you have any relatives in the US, we implore you to tell them to call their congressmen and their senators and protest SOPA, NOW. If this bill passes, the internet as we know it will cease to exist, and the consequences will be dire for everyone – regardless where you live in the world. To know about the evils of the bill, go here.
Source: CBS News, AmericanCensorship.org