Reddit Shutting Down to Protest SOPA
January 18th, 2012 is the day that Reddit will be shutting their website down for 12 hours in protest of SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act.) I believe this makes Reddit the first major website to shut down in protest, however, websites including Google, Yahoo!, Wikipedia, and others are also considering blacking out their websites in protest of SOPA/PIPA.
Update: Boing Boing to join the blackout.
What’s so wrong with SOPA/PIPA? Although presented to stop online privacy piracy, they can (and likely will) be abused to hinder freedom of expression, while hardly preventing online piracy at all. The video below explains it quite well…
From my point of view as a developer, I can clearly see that not only will these acts completely and utterly fail to prevent online privacy piracy, but they will only help to make the internet worse. Are we really willing to give up our freedom for the sake of entertainment companies making an extra buck? US citizens need to do protest this. The future of the internet depends on you.
I don’t agree with music and movie piracy, artists definitely should be paid for their work. However, copying music and movies isn’t technically theft. Theft would be the result of someone taking the work away from another person, whereas copying creates a second piece of that work. Yes, the artist may lose a sale, but copying is not theft. I am not justifying piracy, but I do believe that most true artists care more about sharing their work than making money from it, and so I ask myself – is it really worth giving up these fundamental freedoms because of this issue?
I believe, and encourage others, to pay for the music, shows, and movies they love. Why? Because the more money that goes to the artists that you love, the more work like that will be created and flourish.
The internet is a 21st century telephone. It allows people to communicate on a scale never seen before, learn on a scale never seen before, and has brought democracy to a scale never seen before. There are terrible issues in this world that are going on right now, such as the 30,000 children that die every day due to poverty and curable diseases. Is it worth hindering our ability to communicate because entertainment companies don’t want to lose their sales? Taking away our freedom of expression… that’s the real theft.
Oh, by the way, did you know that Lamar Smith, the guy who authored SOPA, is a copyright infringer? Hilarious, I know.
More posts about: Computer Science, Internet Technologies, Politics & Law, copying, freedom of expression, Internet Censorship, movies, music, PIPA, piracy, Protect IP, shows, SOPA, Stop Online Piracy Act.
I’d like to see Google and Yahoo do it, but I honestly don’t think they will. But if they did, people would have a first hand experience on how it would kinda be like if SOPA goes through.
Good job for Reddit, but IMO, they’re not all that big to make that much a difference. Places like All of the Google sharing services except e-mail, Yahoo, YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter. These are primary sites that could face the brunt of SOPA and if they did what Reddit is doing, THEN people would feel what it would be like for SOPA to be allowed to go through.
If they did that. BAM! People would be banging down the doors of their governments.
But good job Reddit non the less.
Totally agree. Reddit is at least helping lead the way. Even if just one larger site (maybe Wikipedia) played along, it’d still make the national news (not that it would have to considering the popularity of the website) and people would stand up.
I’ll be posting this after I drop a link here for you in case you wanna’ share the info also.
http://sopastrike.com/
The list is getting bigger too.
Looks like Wikipedia heard you Chris – they are joining the blackout. That should have a bigger impact.