SOPA Blackout

Well, the blackout on January 18 worked to get the SOPA and PIPA bills noticed on national media. However, coverage is about what you would expect considering most TV networks are owned by the very media conglomerates that want to shut down the Internet as we know it.

Just check out this report from Media Matters on FOX News' coverage.

More SOPA and PIPA news

A couple more links on the SOPA front.

• The White House has declared it’s opposition to SOPA.
• A great explanation of how PIPA will break the Internet.
• Congress shelves SOPA indefinitely.  (Don’t be confused, though, PIPA is still alive in the Senate.)
• Wikipedia is doing a great job covering the status of these two bills.

Haven’t heard of these bills before:

• SOPA – Stop Online Piracy Act
  Proposes to stop online piracy by barring sites that post, link to, or otherwise make available copyright content. However, this bill would also allow your site to be shut down if someone simply posts a copyrighted image in the comments section of the site. The full text of the bill can be found here.
• PIPA – PROTECT IP Act (Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property)
  This bill would give the government the ability to completely block sites that corporations don’t like. Again, this is ostensibly to allow them to block piracy, except that it doesn’t since downloaders will still be able to access these sites via their IP addresses. The full text of the bill can be found here.

We need everybody’s support to make sure these bills don’t happen. Write your Senator and your Congressman. Or you can fill out one of the many joint letters being compiled online, such as the one at Fight for the Future.

More SOPA in the news, or not...

Is it just me, or is SOPA not getting very much coverage despite its horrendous implications. Oh, guess it isn't just me...

REPORT: News Networks Ignore Controversial SOPA Legislation

Controversial legislation that the co-founder of Google has warned "would put us on a par with the most oppressive nations in the world" has received virtually no coverage from major American television news outlets during their evening newscasts and opinion programming. The parent companies of most of these networks, as well as two of the networks themselves, are listed as official "supporters" of this legislation on the U.S. House of Representatives' website.