Imagine a world without Wikipedia? On Jan 18 2012 Wikipedia gave people a taste of what that would be like and it felt like a return to a darker time, when you had to go to a library to look up something that may or may not be included in their old copy of the encyclopedia Britannica. Wikipedia shut down its page for a day, redirecting people to a darkened page to protest the destructive bills called SOPA and PIPA, that are moving through Congress. These bills would damage the internet, by wrecking DNSSEC, or DNS Security and set up a framework for easy net censorship, that almost inevitably leads to Iranian or Chinese style net censorship. In the end our leaders always want more control. They want to choke off alternative routes to knowledge and information. In the end they want everything in a box they can squeeze in their fist. But the internet fought back and now multiple congressman have publicly stepped back from the legislation, having heard the cries of the people. Protecting a few companies in Hollywood while breaking the underlying framework of the internet is an unworkable, unacceptable position. We should stop piracy. You do that by cutting off the money flow and people are already working on alternative bills, that would sensibly give the justice department the powers it needs, without wrecking the fundamental tenants of openness that rule the web.
The Net Rallies to Stop the Destructive Legislation of SOPA and PIPA
