Blackout

In less than 16 hours, Suburban KID will be joining Wikipedia, Reddit and others in a blackout to protest the censorship of the internet.

Details after the break.

UPDATE: The online and street protests against SOPA and PIPA have been a major success. Millions of people signed petitions, thousands of people took to the streets and thousands of websites blacked out. Even several of Congress's have crashed from a major influx of email and phone calls. Congratulations to the FREE and OPEN World Wide Web!
In the early days of the web, experts were already starting to imagine its potential. Some foresaw an inkling of the powerful communications tool that it would evolve into.

And boy, is it powerful now.

Through the web, we have seen the world becoming connected under one major infrastructure. We have seen information easily accessible because of the internet, and a platform for the free flow of ideas. We have memes and viral videos. We have the Arab Spring!

However, something might change all this forever.

In the United States, a bill called the Stop Online Piracy Act, better known as SOPA(together with it's Senate counterpart PIPA), is making its way through Congress. Its motive, as stated by its advocates(mainly the Motion Picture Association of America and Recording Industry Association of America), is to clamp down on the rampant piracy spread across the World Wide Web.

While this is commendable and all, the methods this bill proposes are highly alarming, to say the least. If it is passed, it will allow content creators to merely file a complaint to the courts, and ask to shut down the ENTIRE site. Remember, just one complaint. No need for any proof whatsoever.

Imagine that. Imagine complaints being filed over anything and everything, and web sites forcing to close down over one complaint. Imagine Google, Youtube, Facebook, Twitter, Wikipedia all going down because of this. In fact, Wikipedia's going to show you exactly how it's like soon enough. Also imagine how easily this could be misused by governments that want to silence opposition.

There are plenty of other concerns, too. Mostly technical, concerning the DNS system employed throughout the web and how SOPA would destroy that. I won't go into details, but if you're interested you can check out the links posted below.

I'm not a citizen of the US, but I've been following this bill more closely than a large number of them, simply because I know how important this is to the values of free speech and freedom itself. Therefore, I, like many other ordinary people out there, truly hope this bill won't stand.

Get ready for blackout.



More info:
http://sopablackout.org/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stop_Online_Piracy_Act
http://news.cnet.com/8301-31921_3-57329001-281/how-sopa-would-affect-you-faq/
http://www.theverge.com/2011/12/22/2648219/stop-online-piracy-act-sopa-what-is-it