Growing number of the major internet giants protest against SOPA and broad NSA spying allegations

Democracy, elections and voting at Democracy Chronicles

SOPA Blackout: What It’s About; How to Take Action

Some of the biggest sites on the internet are taking strong action today to oppose SOPA (and PIPA). Huge sites like Wikipedia and reddit are blacking out, as are many others. Why? What is SOPA? To put it simply, SOPA is a huge threat to your internet and your freedom of speech (more on that in a moment).

First, though, there are calls to action all over the internet today. Head on over to blacked out Wikipedia (only pages not blacked out, as far as I know, are the SOPA page, PIPA page, and SOPA and PIPA initiative page) or reddit to see theirs (you probably have already). My favorite, perhaps, comes from the great activist team at Credo. Take action today through one or all of these sites!

What SOPA (and PIPA) Threaten

Anyway, what these bills, one in the House and the other in the Senate, threaten is the internet as we know it. Sites like Wikipedia and reddit could be shut down if these bills became laws.

More from reddit: “Today, for 12 hours, reddit.com goes dark to raise awareness of two bills in congress: H.R.3261 ‘Stop Online Piracy Act’ and S.968 ‘PROTECT IP’, which could radically change the landscape of the Internet. These bills provide overly broad mechanisms for enforcement of copyright which would restrict innovation and threaten the existence of websites with user-submitted content, such as reddit.”