Blackout Day

When rumors started flying around the internet that companies like Google and Facebook were considering a coordinated blackout to protest SOPA and PIPA, I eagerly hoped for a complete takedown of the sites. That hasn’t happened to nearly the degree I wanted, and I fear it won’t be enough to make the point. However, some sites are going pretty far. The English Wikipedia site, while not down, is throwing a black anti-SOPA message up to obscure every page as soon as it loads. (Non-English versions have a black banner at the top of every page urging readers to consider the devastating effects of SOPA/PIPA, too.) If you visit the homepage of WordPress.com, every “hot blog post” has been replaced with a link to an anti-SOPA page.

I wrote a letter to my representatives about SOPA/PIPA last month and published it here on my blog for everyone to see. I’ve been following the issue since October, though I’ve been busy with life and haven’t commented on it much except to share articles I’ve read about it on Facebook and Twitter. I didn’t think to save the links to those articles for later. However, I’d like to take a moment, on this day that many companies have staged protests against the SOPA and PIPA bills, to share with you some of the better articles I’ve seen in the past couple of days.