So if you haven't heard already what SOPA is you may want to catch up on your reading. Here is the Bill. October of last year this censorship bill was introduced into the House of Representatives by Representative Lamar S. Smith. The bill, if made law, would expand the ability of U.S. law enforcement and copyright holders to fight online trafficking in copyrighted intellectual property and counterfeit goods. It would have an incredible impact on Google, YouTube, Facebook, etc. Basically any website with user uploaded content. Those companies and websites would have to search through literally hundreds of thousands of videos, pictures, music files, articles and more to delete un-authorized content. So that Highlight you video taped using your iPhone of the 49'ers beating the Saints last weekend and uploaded to YouTube will be deleted. Or else YouTube will face a lawsuit if found guilty. All of those movies on YouTube that are broken up into segments will be removed. Anything that was uploaded and not original to that user will be removed.
It doesn't just apply to YouTube. Like I said, Google will be in big trouble too. Because you can use Google to search for torrent sites and free songs etc. All of those millions of sites will need to be removed from Google's search engine index.
So come January 18th, 2012. There will be an online movement to get people more aware about this ridiculous act. Thousands of websites will be blacked out... On purpose of course. Wikipedia being probably the biggest one to announce it so far will black out there website tomorrow to draw attention to this bill. If Google and Facebook did the same thing you could almost certainly guarantee congressmen will have their phones ringing off the hook. So be aware if you cannot post on Facebook tomorrow this may be the reason why. Check out this website for more information on the Blackout and please support it. Call your congressmen and tell them how awful this bill will be to the internet.
We will not be blacked out tomorrow because our customers still rely on our website everyday. But please call and make a statement against this Bill. It could have a devastating effect on how we use the internet today.
