For the past few days I have been getting questions about my Twitter/Facebook/Google Plus avatar, why did I put a [CENSORED] bar over it? It’s not a joke involving innuendo or anything like that, it’s a sign to protest two bills that they are trying to pass in the USA, dubbed SOPA and PIPA. You also may have already noticed I censored this site a while ago to get people to write their congressmen and senators. I’m an American, I live in Canada but I am still an American and a voter, more so my host is in the USA so this would effect my site in addition to my enjoyment of the internet. The bills are written in such a way that would give the government (and private citizens and companies) the opportunity to harass innocent people and punish someone they think needs punishing when they can’t stop them with other legal means. You’ve seen it before, the local guy who is noisy against his local government gets tickets for jaywalking when no one else gets tickets in that city[true story].
I wrote my congressman, Joe Courtney and my senators, my congressman actually sent me a letter back. It’s a form letter telling me I don’t understand law and he is just trying to protect americans. I highlighted the portions of the bill that I have problems with and explained why and told him if he voted for this bill then I would not be voting for him. That was weeks ago, I don’t expect a reply. I have not gotten a reply from either Blumenthal or Lieberman and I’m not holding my breath. It saddens me that as a voter I’m basically told I don’t count, am too stupid to understand law and am just simply ignored. This isn’t how the world works, people have a voice and we will make our voice heard.
How? By blacking out the internet tomorrow. Goodbye wikipedia, good by all those fun blogs you like to read. The net is going dark… I’ll be fine, I have a lot of comics to read till it’s over. What will you be doing?
- What is SOPA and PIPA? Why should I be against it?
- http://fightforthefuture.org/pipa
- How can you help?
- http://americancensorship.org
- Didn’t I read that Obama is going to promise to veto this?
- Yeah because he promised to veto NDAA too, (even worse of a bill), oh wait, he signed that into law, didn’t he?
- How do I blackout my website?
- WordPress Plugin
- Code for HTML sites
- How to Strike?
(I want to thank Tabitha Grace Smith and Mathew Wayne Selznick for helping me find tools to make blackout/strike easy for me, and everyone else trying to get the word out)