EDIT: Kind of a summary, I suppose. http://chrisacky.posterous.com/sopa-highights-the-roundup

Well, today is an interesting day. It seems that many of the largest sites online are doing *something* to get people to pay attention to the SOPA and PIPA bills being worked on in Congress. These bills are being sponsored by members of congress with strong…financial backing from various media conglomerates. While I’m not at all proficient in legal-speak (it makes my head hurt) it seems that these bills are meant primarily to give more power to these corporations in their effort to take down ‘intellectual property’ theft, or ‘piracy.’ (See what I did there with the quotes? That represents my opinion that intellectual property isn’t real, and my astonishment that they haven’t thought to monetize ‘pirating’ rather than spend all that money fighting it…) If you like IP and dislike piracy, this bill probably sounds great. Except that these large corporations are already abusing the powers they’ve been granted by congress, taking down websites and online content of competitors and people that are not infringing on their IP. So, as far as I can tell, they seem to have plenty of power to take down sites on the Internet already. Also, they seem inclined to abuse the power they already have…why give them more?

So, what does it boil down to? The SOPA and PIPA bills are being pushed out of committee (commitees that have been avoiding the tech community as much as possible, who are all trying to tell them why this is a bad idea) and soon will be put to a vote. It would probably be a good idea to learn some more about this, and if you agree that these bills are bad ideas, tell people. I’ll probably only reach half a dozen people, but you’re all very smart people, and I have faith that you’ll take a look and make a decision for yourself.

I don’t really care if people agree with me or not–I just hope people will look into it and decide where they stand, then act on it.

Cheers.