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SOPA/PIPA Protest

I will be participating in the internet strike on Wednesday, January 18 in protest about the SOPA/PIPA legislation currently being considered by both the US House of Representatives and US Senate. So, on Wednesday, my regular blog will be replaced with information for contacting your members of Congress to ask they NOT support SOPA/PIPA since these bills are nothing more than legislated censorship.

While I certainly understand the need to protect intellectual property and the need of protection for copyright holders (although that’s technically already been covered since 1998 in the US by DMCA), SOPA/PIPA are just not the best way to handle that task. Both pieces of legislation are poorly written and too far-reaching. Please contact your Congress Critters to let them know your thoughts before they vote on this legislation on January 24th!

See you on Thursday …

P.S. – You can’t even begin to imagine how difficult this post was to write without citing Wikipedia! If you think this legislation doesn’t apply to you, just think about how often you use that or similar resources. What would you do if they were suddenly gone?! They, along with several other major sites, will also be going dark on Wednesday in protest of SOPA/PIPA. So, I guess we’ll all have to step back in time to a world before Wikipedia, Reddit, Craigslist, LOLCats, and more for at least one day. Personally, that’s not a world in which I want to live!

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17 January 2012

Misc., Thoughts

1 comment

Blogging, Congress, Internet Protest, PIPA, Politics, SOPA

Going Green

My blog is going green today in support of the freedom movement in Iran. The people of Iran seem to be clamoring for freedom & democracy. Going into this past Friday’s election, it seemed pretty likely that incumbent President Ahmadinejad would be defeated and the former Prime Minister Mousavi (a reformist) would become the new President. However, post election, there seems to be substantial speculation that the election outcome was rigged in order to keep Ahmadinejad in power.

Following the election results being announced, the country has been in chaos. There are hundreds of thousands of people protesting, communications (satellite TV, cell phone, internet access, etc.) have been jammed & blocked, riot police have been attacking the protesters, people have been shot, and access to hospitals have been denied so the injured have been unable to receive treatment.

Regardless of how all this ends up, my thoughts go out to the people of Iran. I hope the bloodshed ends quickly, and that the true results, whatever that might be, will be verified.