SOPA Day

Today is the big day for the Anti-Sopa activists, Wikipedia’s English version is down, Wordpress.com is dark, and Google.com has censored their homepage logo. A lot of famous big companies and Internet sites like Facebook, Mozilla, Twitter, Yahoo, Foursquare, Amazon or eBay are supporting this fight too. The black out will last all day.

We have talked about SOPA in this blog, but today is a special day because a lot of websites decided to black out. An example is Reddit.com, they announced that they would be blacking out their site today. Reddit.com four 12 hours goes dark to raise awareness of SOPA and PROTECT IP bills in US congress. They argue that these two bills could change the landscape of the Internet.

You can check sopablackout.org if you want to blackout your web. In this web you can obtain the code to put in your web page a banner supporting the SOPA Blackout or the code to blackout your web page. With this code your web will temporarily turn down and it will show a text with information about the controversial bills SOPA and PROTECT IP(PIPA).

*About SOPA

It would particularly affect sites with heavy user generated content. Sites like Twitter, Reddit, Youtube and others may cease to exist in their current for if this bill is passed.

*About PIPA

PIPA is SOPA’s twin in the Senate. Under current DMCA law, if a user uploads a copyrighted movie to sites like Youtube, the site isn't held accountable so long as they provide a way to report user infringement. The user who uploaded the movie is held accountable for their actions, not the site. PIPA would change that - it would place the blame on the site itself, and would also provide a way for copyright holders to seize the site's domain in extreme circumstances.

*Information from sopablockauto.org/learnmore

Big companies like Google are fighting really hard against these two bills. You can check this post in Google’s official blog, it’s called “Don’t censor the web” and they talk about the blackout and they explain why they are against SOPA and PIPA bills. A huge campaign asking people to send petitions to the US Congress has started, Google has enabled a landing page where every US citizen can send and sign their petition to the US Congress.

Here is a video from EngineAdvocacy where you can see a few Internet entrepreneurs talking about SOPA and PIPA and it’s possible effects on the Internet

Do you know what SOPA is?

SOPA is the Stop Online Piracy Act, it proposes to expand the ability of US law enforcement and copyright holders to protect copyrighted intellectual property and fight online trafficking of that property. The complement of SOPA is the PROTECT IP (Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property Act), that proposes to give the US government and copyright holders tools to stop access to “rogue website dedicated to the sale of infringement and counterfeit goods”.

This two acts are one of the hottest trending topics on the Internet, a lot of people inside and outside the US are fighting against this Acts that have not been well received by the Internet community.

The big ones on the Internet industry, as Google, Twitter and Yahoo, have already said they don’t like this SOPA and PROTECT IP comparing them with Iran or China laws.

If you have never download anything illegally you are not safe from this acts. In the video below you can see why you are not safe from SOPA and PROTECT IP Acts.

PROTECT IP / SOPA Breaks The Internet

from Fight for the Future on Vimeo.