What is SOPA AND PIPA?
SOPA stands for Stop Online Piracy Act a bill that was on the House Floor only a few short weeks ago that with the help of everyone across the US was stopped (In its current form)
PIPA stands for Protect Intellectual Property Act its a bill that is going to be heard by the entire senate shortly.
They have a number of congressmen and congresswomen who have co-sponsored them. This is NOT about Republican or Democrat. This is about protecting our rights as bloggers and internet users. While I agree that protecting Intellectual Property and Stopping Online Piracy is important both of these bills have much further reaches that could effectively shut down the internet as we know it. That means Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, even Google, Bing, and the search engines you use that give you rewards for using their services. The shutting down of the internet probably wouldn’t happen overnight but slowly taking away more and more of your freedom to use the internet and visit sites of your choice all because someone decided they were supporting or allowing of the cross-posting of information that others had a claim to.
To Learn More about both of these Bills:
You can view information on both SOPA and PIPAvia Open Congress. It’s best if you look at the information for yourself and make a decision that you are against these two bills in their current form. Visit this site to learn more about what you can do to make your voice heard by your Congress people.
What can we do?
As Bloggers we might not all be able to Black Out our sites because we don’t have the technical know how of some of the larger giants out there protesting these two Bills so we had to come up with something that would be meaningful and help to engage and educate our friends, readers, and fellow bloggers to take a stand. Check out SOPASTRIKE for an up to the minute list of internet giants going Black in a united stand against this bill. We are pledging to silence our blogs and all social networks on Jan 18th from 9pm-10pm EST. That is just 1 hour of your day that will hopefully not cut into anyone’s livelihood or get them in trouble with a sponsor. You can use the time to read a book or clean (you know that thing that gets neglected when you are online?), take pictures of your neighborhood, or create a fun recipe that you can share with you readers, friends, and followers when you get back online. Even if you don’t have a blog you can take a stand and not use the internet for 1 hour of your day to show your congress people that you are against the bill in its current form and will not stand for outright government censorship of the Web.
FurKid Fosters and I have joined together to start this pledge and ask you to join with us in taking a stand. Please feel free to take one (or all) of the graphics below and post them on your blog or website in a prominent area or even to Facebook. Then add your info to the linky below so that we can network and show our solidarity. Share this post with your family, friends, and colleagues. Together we can accomplish more than we can separately.
Bloggers Taking a Stand Against SOPA and PIPA
If you choose to display one of the buttons or the graphic, please use the included HTML and do not alter it. Copy and paste the HTML as is for the buttons to link back, correctly, to this post. Be sure you add your info to the linky at the bottom of this post. Then…share, share, share!! We need to stand united so that congress takes notice that Bloggers around the nation regardless of what Niche they usually hang out in or the crowds they keep all stand united against the passing of this bill.
Add your Blog or Website to the list and grab the code so that even more people will join together with us against internet censorship.