SOPA and PIPA: Everything you need to know

Today is SOPA Blackout Day to oppose the bills currently being proposed in Congress, Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and Protect-IP Act (PIPA). You may have noticed that there are several major websites that are down today, including Wikipedia, Reddit, and Mozilla. You may have noticed that you Google has a message on their homepage encouraging people to contact Congress.

What exactly is SOPA and PIPA?

In essence, these are attempts by the US government being fueled by the entertainment industry to fight online piracy. They are being positioned and publicized as anti-piracy acts by government entities that do not understand the consequences of what they are proposing. Hollywood donates large sums of money to politicians and that money is being threatened, in theory, by increases in online piracy. Thus, these bills were born.

First, let’s take a quick look at a video on SOPA Blackout that explains in layman’s terms what this is all about:

[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/31100268[/vimeo]

Now, let’s take a look at some of the perspectives on the internet right now that tell the story of the SOPA/PIPA opposition. If you’re thinking that this seems to be a one-sided piece, it is. There is only a sliver of gray area here. These bills offer an overwhelmingly obvious glimpse of censorship that takes us down a path which can only lead to one thing: a closed internet.

First and foremost, here’s an open letter to Washington signed by many founders of major tech companies:

An Open Letter to Washington

We’ve all had the good fortune to found Internet companies and nonprofits in a regulatory climate that promotes entrepreneurship, innovation, the creation of content and free expression online.

However we’re worried that the PROTECT IP Act and the Stop Online Piracy Act — which started out as well-meaning efforts to control piracy online — will undermine that framework.

These two pieces of legislation threaten to:

Require web services, like the ones we helped found, to monitor what users link to, or upload. This would have a chilling effect on innovation;

Deny website owners the right to due process of law;

Give the U.S. Government the power to censor the web using techniques similar to those used by China, Malaysia and Iran; and

Undermine security online by changing the basic structure of the Internet.

We urge Congress to think hard before changing the regulation that underpins the Internet. Let’s not deny the next generation of entrepreneurs and founders the same opportunities that we all had.

Marc Andreessen, co-founder of Netscape and Andreessen Horowitz
Sergey Brin, co-founder of Google
Jack Dorsey, co-founder of Twitter and Square
Caterina Fake, co-founder of Flickr and Hunch
David Filo, co-founder of Yahoo!
Reid Hoffman, co-founder of LinkedIn
Arianna Huffington, co-founder of The Huffington Post
Chad Hurley, co-founder of YouTube
Brewster Kahle, founder of the Internet Archive and co-founder of Alexa Internet
Elon Musk, co-founder of PayPal
Craig Newmark, founder of craigslist
Pierre Omidyar, founder of eBay
Biz Stone, co-founder of Obvious and Twitter
Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia and the Wikimedia Foundation
Evan Williams, co-founder of Blogger and Twitter
Jerry Yang, co-founder of Yahoo!

Now, let’s hear from Jimmy Wales, co-founder of Wikipedia, as he discusses SOPA on CNN:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5X7GwsIERbo

If you think that it’s just the internet elite trying to protect their meal ticket, think again. Here’s a great video depicting what SOPA and PIPA means to someone who doesn’t make millions of dollars of the internet:

Additional resources and articles:

So, who all is involved? Several major websites and a ton of smaller sites are expressing themselves:

Google is involved

They aren’t participating in the blackout directly (and rightfully so, as people who do go to sites that tell them for the first time about SOPA or PIPA will go to Google to find out what it’s all about), but they blacked out their famous logo and linked from their homepage to a message about the bills. The also made a nice little infographic, but unfortunately (at the time of this writing) the link doesn’t work.

BoingBoing is involved

Minecraft is involved

Vanilla Forums is involved

WordPress is involved

The CTD is involved

Wikipedia is involved

MichaelMoore is involved

The ECA is involved

Cryptocat is involved

Errata Security is involved

Syracuse University is involved

Digibase is involved

941 Media Project is involved

Occupy Birmingham is involved

The Pirate Party is involved

The Day the LOLcats Died

Last but not least, let’s watch this video that would be funny if it wasn’t so close to the truth.

SOPA and PIPA must be stopped. Do your part. Stay informed. Spread the word.

The SOPA blackout is the most American thing we’ve done all day

The Tea Party movement was intended for Americans to harken to the revolutions of the past when tyranny and taxation reigned over the colonies. The #OccupyWallStreet movement drew awareness to the tremendous gaps between the “haves” and the “have nots” with a call for a more sensible distribution of wealth. Both have supporters and detractors of equal passions. Neither was as purely American as what the SOPA/PIPA/OPEN blackouts planned for tomorrow represent.

There is distinct gray surrounding the Tea Party and #OWS. Both galvanized parts of the population but the political questions being asked by both sides weren’t as clear cut as tomorrow’s protests. With the Tea Party, there are as many people (if not more) who believe that the act of lowering taxes for the sake of freedom was a dangerous proposition in a world where the government can barely keep things together with the money they have coming in. With #OWS, there were as many people (if not more) who believed that the rallying calls were more about socialism than fairness.

With StopSOPA, the voices of those “in the know” are unified. Now, it’s a matter of getting the world out to those who do not know what’s at stake.

It’s for this reason that Wednesday’s protests are the most American thing that his been done in a long time by a large group of people.

It is coming to light that many of those in Congress who are supporting the bill have a complete lack of understanding of how the internet works and the consequences of censoring it in the way they propose. The financial donations from Hollywood, Nashville, and New York City are high and the lobbying efforts are strong. There are few who are willing to donate time or money to an opposition that will be labeled as “pro-piracy” which is why the general population on the internet is the only defense against the tyranny of idiocy that faces the country today.

Social news site Reddit has propelled itself to the front lines as the leader in the most important protest in recent history. Not since the Vietnam war has so much been at stake where the unified people have the potential to defeat an oppressive government. With Wikipedia, Cheezburger, Imgur, and other powerful websites on board, this will certainly help the cause and send a clear message to Washington that these pieces of legislation are asinine and not supported by their constituents.

In general, the average American has no idea what SOPA is and what’s at stake. They read the reports from mainstream media that this is an anti-piracy bill protecting the rights of content owners. They hear that those of us who oppose it simply want to be able to download free movies from foreign sites. This is not the case.

I am not a pirate. I haven’t downloaded anything illegally since the Napster days and I do not support piracy. I also do not believe in amputating an arm because there’s a wart on somebody’s hand. The statement isn’t meant to downplay the problems that piracy poses to the entertainment industry. It’s simply to illustrate that destroying the freedoms we have today for the sake of a powerful and wealthy lobby is insane and completely un-American.

SOPA is against the ropes and PIPA isn’t far behind, but Americans must remember two things: politicians are slippery and there’s a lot of money at stake. There can be zero doubt left on the table after tomorrow. There can be zero doubt left on the table next week, next month, next year, or whenever the next time this type of legislation is brought to the table.

If they are defeated, they will return. Of that, there is no doubt.

It’s not enough to post comments in support. Congress must be called. They must be faxed. They must have letters (yes, the ones with pen and paper) sent to them. Emails won’t work. The time spent and messages sent must be tangible.

People must be informed. The protests are going to bring it to light for many Americans but it can’t stop there. Tell your friends. Talk to people at work. Educate your family. Get the outrage built and the keep the protest sustained. Wednesday does not mark the end of SOPA, PIPA, or OPEN. It marks the beginning of the ongoing defense of our internet liberties.

It’s the American thing to do.

Website owners, here’s how to protest SOPA on January 18th

Social news aggregator Reddit.com took the lead and announced that they were “going black” on January 18th to protest SOPA and PIPA. Despite backpedaling in Congress, the need is greater than ever for people to learn what the bills will mean if passed. Other websites need to follow Reddit’s lead.

Several have, including Cheezburger, GOOD, and MoveOn, but it’s not enough. If you’re a website owner, Sara Jo Chipps has an easy way for you to participate.

Drop the following code in between your two <HEAD></HEAD> tags on your site, your users will be redirected to the blackout page that describes what you are doing and why. Then, when the protest is over, simply remove the added code.

<script>

window.location = “http://protestsopa.org”;

</script>

That’s it! Get your protest on and show Washington that the Internet must remain free.