Today we are witnessing a momentous cyber-protest: the intentional self-blackout of dozens of popular U.S.-based websites and technology blogs to protest, and call public attention to, two bills currently in the U.S. Congres aimed to regulate the internet. These bills are the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in the House of Representatives and the Protect Intellectual Property Act (PIPA) in the Senate. Many in the civil society of the internet believe that, in their current form, H.R. 3261 and S.968 represent what Salon writer Andrew Leonard calls "a stark, existential threat to the core architecture of the free and open Internet."
According to Washington Post writer David Farenthold, "The idea is to cut off the channels that deliver American customers, and their money, to potential pirates. But tech companies see the laws as a dangerous overreach, objecting because, they say, the laws would add burdensome costs and new rules that would destroy the freewheeling soul of the Internet."
Major and popular web-based presence Wikipedia (a collaborative, nonprofit organization for amassing knowledge), Google's search engine (the mother of all search engines in America), blog builder site WordPress, social news site Reddit, internet classified site Craigslist, and prime technology sites Wired, Techcrunch, Mashable, Mozilla, among many others, turned off their content today to join the protest.
Will the protest cause Congressional leaders to sit up and take notice? Watch and see. Our media future will be affected by the outcome of this movement.
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