Thousands of internet sites are going dark today to protest pending legislation know as the Stop Internet Piracy Act (SOPA). Google, Wikipedia, Twitter, Facebook and Yahoo! are leading the charge against the legislation, arguing that the legislation, aimed at combating internet piracy, is too over-reaching and amounts to nothing more than government censorship of the web and would have a crippling effect on e-commerce.
If SOPA becomes law, you could be held criminally liable for everything you share on Facebook, Twitter or post on YouTube if the original content was not created by you. Access to these and other web sites would be blocked if they post content created by others without permission. Services like Paypal would be prohibited from processing payments for those sites as well.
While the issue of online piracy is a real concern, do we really want to create a police state in order to fight it?
Call congress and let your reps know that you oppose internet censorship. (202) 224-3121.
