12 Hours to Draw Attention to Congress and Free Speech

Many major websites will go dark this Wednesday for 12 hours, protesting two United States Congressional bills which could greatly curtail Internet and free speech.  In addition, thousands of more sites and blogs will join the protest to call attention to the cause, including VGMH.   The lowest-rated Congress of all time can't lead the country--but many of them are trying to pass laws that would make it very difficult to express opinions on the internet and share ideas---and they are hoping that most voters won't pay attention.  

The Internet Archive, a non-profit site that works with the Library of Congress and the Smithsonian to catalog and make documents, audio and video available to the public, plans to be dark from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. PT.To see what the internet would look like if they have their way, visit Wikipedia during the protest. 



Internet giants Google, Wordpress, Yahoo!, Facebook, Twitter, eBay, Mozilla, and Wikipedia say that the proposed laws constitute a First Amendment violation, promote censorship, and harm the democratic flow of information.  The pending U.S. legislation would make it impossible to run any website that links material (or allows commenters to link material) by making blogs liable for copyright infringement.  

 "Legislation such as this directly affects libraries such as the Internet Archive, which collects, preserves, and offers access to cultural materials," the Internet Archive said on its blog. "These bills would encourage the development of blacklists to censor sites with little recourse or due process. The Internet Archive is already blacklisted in China — let’s prevent the United States from establishing its own blacklist system."

If passed, The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and its Senate counterpart, the Protect IP Act or PIPA, would allow the government to shut down websites that contain content or links to unauthorized copyrighted content.  Moreover, advertisers and Internet service providers would be banned from doing business with transgressors.