Tomorrow, many websites you depend on each day will go dark to protest the abomination that is SOPA and PIPA, two incredibly bad laws to restrict internet freedom currently proceeding through Congress. 7000 sites including Wikipedia, WordPress, Reddit and others will go completely dark. Mozilla will go dark. Google will post a large message explaining expressing their opposition to these horribly thought out laws.
SOPA and PIPA are two bills pretty much written by the movie and music industry lobby to ostensibly limit illegal downloading, but they are so broad and poorly written that they allow people to be jailed for up to 5 years for illegally downloading a single song. They’d force companies like Twitter and Facebook to censor user posts. And they’d force search engines like Google to not show “offending” websites or face big penalties. For more info, read my full post on SOPA and PIPA from last month.
Kids, if you have homework due tomorrow and thursday, get it done in the next few hours because Wikipedia won’t be able to help you!
