Wikipedia, Craigslist, Reddit and many other sites are shutting down for 12 hours in protest of two bills SOPA and PIPA. Basically it stands for Stop Online Piracy Act and Protect IP Act. It sounds all good when you put words like “piracy” and “protect” in the acts, but they are no good for us wicked internet mongers.
The goal is to shut down pirated/bootlegged sites with stolen movies and music, but the blanket terms affect all websites. So if I post a video of…say..a kitten having a tickle fight and the original owner doesn’t want it on a public domain then the Justice Department can come in and shut down the ENTIRE SITE and the site where it came from. No questions asked and no warning.
So basically, the bill would kill Youtube, your love of watching Panda’s Sneezing or Honey Badger awesomeness and any other sites who link to it or post content from the offending site. So your favorites, like Hollywood Dame, would be a big blank page of error and no one would be here to talk about Lindsay Lohan’s latest meltdown of stabbing a child after he stole her crayons and called her a ho. (Or whatever she is up to today.)
You can sign this petition and bug your local representatives to vote HELL NO on the bills.
