The Internet is kind of Dark today.

Ahh! Wikipedia has had a a black-out! Wait Wikipedia did it. For the whole 24 hours of today, Wikipedia will black-out it's English version to raise awareness of and protest the passage of SOPA and PIPA.

The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) is a proposed U.S. bill by Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX) would allow the Department of Justice to seek court orders against websites out of jurisdiction accused of infringing, enabling, or facilitating copyright infringement.  The Protect Intellectual Property (PIPA) is also a proposed bill by Patrick Leahy (D-VT) would require financial transaction providers, internet advertising service, internet provider, & information location tools to stop doing financial accusations with copyright infringing. sites. Both of the bills correspond to each other, SOPA is meant for the House of Representatives and PIPA is for the Senate. SOPa has been postponed until a consensus is reached and PIPA  will come to a vote 1/24/2012.

You see, Wikipedia is part of a larger coalition of organizations that have undergone black-outs including Mozilla, moveon.org, Reddit, craiglist, and of course

 Hint:Google
These organizations maintain that these bills could seriously damage or restrict access to the internet since they would require websites to not only avoid infringing copyright but to get rid of links to websites violate copyright.If a copyright holder were to see that their work was infringed on , they could petition a judge to evaluate the case who may send a court order to shut it down. A single infringement could shut down a website. Other groups such as the MPAA, RIAA, screened actors guild, Sony,  etc have supported the bill. They maintain that the bills are important to stop copyright infringement & it won't support censorship

One of these groups The MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America) has also responded to the blackouts with CEO , Chris Dodd,  stated that the blackouts by opposing sites were "a dangerous gimmick" and "It is an irresponsible response and a disservice to people who rely on them for information and use their services"
Well, it's an irresponsible thing to support a law that punishes websites for linking to infringing sites & possibly shutting them down for a single case of  copyright infringement as depending on the view of a single judge, don't you think?


Comprehensive reasons for opposing these bills