The TWiB! Blackout: SOPA & PIPA |
Have you heard of SOPA and PIPA? Here’s a small quick breakdown…
SOPA stands for Stop Online Piracy Act and its sibling bill is PIPA, or the Protect IP Act. Both bills are written in a way that makes them appear to attempt the killing of online piracy – the hosting of media like videos, music, software, and the like, and offering it for download when the hosts do not have the right to do so. What they actually would do, instead, is to put up a screen door to block a wave, this stopping all of the law-abiding fish when its the water they’re trying to get. SOPA and PIPA give rights to businesses and the government itself to stop and sue companies out of existence, even if they’re not actually doing anything illegal.
What they are calling “anti-piracy” when enacted can easily become censorship. This is simply NOT okay. This type of law could destroy platforms for artistic expression & technological advancement simply because someone uploaded a single questionable file. This type of law would have destroyed YouTube. And honestly speaking–if that happened there wouldn’t have been a “This Week in Blackness.” These bills claim to only want to uphold the law but at the same time creates a world where the “law” is whatever a corporation or government says it is at the moment. They could have used more specific language in the bill. They chose not to.
You can read up on SOPA and PIPA…well..everywhere. Just Google it. (Google by the way? Also against this bill. Even Skynet can’t back this)
So to show solidarity with those fighting SOPA and PIPA all TWIB properties will be shut down tomorrow, January 18th. This is what it could feel like if one day some corporation claimed that of the hundreds of podcasts, videos and articles we’ve put out–one of them infringed on their copyright.
Please consider signing the petition and tell congress NO to SOPA and PIPA.
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