Jan 17 2012
Stop SOPA/PIPA
On Wednesday from 8 am EST to 8 pm EST, Dear Author will join others like WordPress and Wikipedia in going dark. We are joining these other sites in solidarity to protest SOPA and PIPA, in their current incarnation, bills that will be used to censor the internet.
Think of it this way. A number of authors host their own message boards. If one user posts a link to an image of a hot guy that is copyrighted, someone else could get that author’s site pulled down. If an author posted a video from YouTube that used copyrighted songs, that author could be in violation of the law and have access to her site blocked.
A protest against this bill is not a protest against the fight against piracy. Instead, it is a statement in support of a due process, the right to be heard, the right to be presumed innocent of wrongdoing until proof has been made.
Tomorrow some sites around the internet will be black to display what the outcome of PIPA/SOPA could be, if passed. But don’t take my word for it. I urge you to spend some time tomorrow reading up about the law.
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Jan 17, 2012 @ 21:36:26
Thank you.
Jan 18, 2012 @ 00:44:51
I hope neither SOPA or PIPA passes. I’ve emailed and called my reps to tell them so.
Fingers crossed.
Jan 18, 2012 @ 09:30:18
It boggles me how the US government can make a bill that affects the “world”. I’m Canadian and my blog is on Blogger. Yet due to a bill that may have passed in the US I would still be penalized and potentially shut down?
I believe this raises interesting scenarios. If this bill passes, can the US laws now trickle out and force other countries to abide by their laws???
Very interesting to see how this all plays out. I hate piracy but this seems way to extreme.
Jan 18, 2012 @ 22:07:59
I missed you so much today. Never leave me again.
Jan 18, 2012 @ 22:17:48
What Ridley said! :)
(and I was asleep most of the time you were blacked out too! – Australia time)
Jan 18, 2012 @ 23:25:19
Thank you DA, for participating. This has been a historic day. We should thank Wikipedia and Reddit as well. Thanks to them, thousands of people finally woke up and understood what’s going on.
PIPA is up again for a vote on January 24th. Keep calling your Congress members to ask them to withdraw support. Don’t give up the fight!
Jan 18, 2012 @ 23:40:56
@MichelleKCanada: The US is already enforcing their domestic copyright laws in other countries. Google Richard O’Dwyer. He’s a British student who’s currently being extradited from the UK to the US to face copyright violation charges. The Daily Mail website really have their panties in a bunch over the the US-UK extradition laws, so they have heaps of articles about him.
His crime? He ran a British website with *links* to free downloads of US copyrighted material (tv shows, mostly). He was not in the US when he did this, the server he used to host his site was not in the US, and he did not host the copyrighted material itself on his website, just links. It is not clear if what he did (hosting links) is even illegal in the UK, yet he will be extradited to the US to face charges of violating American law. There will be much more of this if SOPA passes.
Jan 19, 2012 @ 09:43:08
Thanks, I’ve been sending letters to my representatives stating my opinion on SOPA and PIPA as well as the fact that I am 56 years old, vote every election and really hate the way that our civil liberties are being eroded. My local newspaper even though it is no longer owned by Gannett never covered this although it was on the local TV and radio news.