Tag Archives: Protest

How was that?

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Wikipedia Blacks out January 18th in protest of SOPA and PIPAAny night sweats?  Terrors?  Suddenly not knowing simple facts because you couldn’t look them up on Wikipedia?  The Anti SOPA/PIPA blackout was interesting for me at least.  I saw a few sites that said they would go black but didn’t, I attribute most of that to mistakes made in coding and one site I know believes the report that SOPA is dead.

  • There were a lot of confused people thinking we were talking about soap but spelling ti wrong.
  • Some supporters of SOPA/PIPA called us names and claimed the blackout was a gimmick
  • A lot of sites only blacked out their US websites
  • A lot of memes were created today
  • several websites had great blackout messages (I think my favorite is the Oatmeal)
  • Two co-sponsors of the bill have withdrawn their support and other backers in congress have stepped back (I refrain from giving a number because this may increase, I hope)
  • I really enjoyed this article from the BBC, it even has screen caps of all the sites that went dark (I didn’t realize I could make all my flickr images black for the day, that would have been cool)

Would SOPA/PIPA have passed if we didn’t do this today?  Maybe, maybe not.  Now we will never know since it is clear we have made a change.  It took a day of people wanting to leave GoDaddy for them to change their mind and half a day of the internet to black out to shake the co-founders, I will call this a win.  Still, let’s not think we won completely, the bills are still out there and they have supporters and lot of money behind it.

Are you ready to protest SOPA and PIPA?

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In Protest of SOPA and PIPAFor 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?

(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)