How We Stopped SOPA

On January 18th, 2012... one year ago today... something incredible happened. The internet went dark. There wasn't any power outage or system failure, no it was bigger than that. The internet chose to go dark in protest of a bill in congress called the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA). Major websites like Google, Wikipedia, Reddit, and many more altered their websites to sensor it in some way to show what legislation such as SOPA could do if passed. And it worked. The internet rallied, and rose up in great numbers to fight for our internet freedom. That day will be immortalized in the history of the internet as a bright beacon of strength and unity.

Below is a video of a speech from Aaron Swartz, one of the front line fighters against SOPA. If you haven't seen Aaron Swartz's name lately, do a quick search for him. His story is fantastic in his accomplishments, yet tragically short in time. This video is his recollection of how we defeated an internet censorship bill, and showed congress that we will fight for what we believe in.

You can tell a lot about a person by the way others talk about them. After Aaron's passing, Sir Tim Berners-Lee (he invented the internet, by the way) took to Twitter:

Aaron dead. World wanderers, we have lost a wise elder. Hackers for right, we are one down. Parents all, we have lost a child. Let us weep.

Free and Open Internet!

With each passing year, it seems as though there is an effort by Big Business and governments across the world to control what we can find on the internet. I don't know about you, but i don't want any government telling me that I can't read about what is going on around the world.

Last year, it was the Stop Online Piracy Act, or SOPA, and it was concocted by the MPAA and RIAA with some help from their friends in Washington. If you don't know anything about SOPA, then you clearly haven't been paying attention.

In December, world governments will have a closed door meeting about censoring internet content. Join me, in letting your voice be heard. Join me in telling them that the internet belongs to the people, not to the government, Big Business, nor special interest groups. Join me in fighting to keep the internet #freeandopen.

Visit www.google.com/takeaction/ to learn more.

Update:
Apparently this issue is a bit more complicated than initially thought. The International Telecommunications Union (ITU) has published a notice claiming that Google is incorrect over their claim of governments seeking control and censorship of the internet. On the other hand, the one that would gain control of the state of the internet would be none other than the ITU itself, and "that would be a disaster", according to Eric Schmidt, Google's executive chairman.
This article over at Talking Points Memo does a good job of breaking down both arguments while remaining unbiased. I'd recommend reading it before forming an opinion either way.

I'm tired of it.

A boy and his father are in a car wreck and are badly injured. Two ambulances arrive and take them to two different hospitals. The boy is wheeled into the operating room, the surgeon walks in, looks at the boy and says "I cannot operate on this boy, for he is my son." How is that possible?

The surgeon is the boy's mother.

Old riddle, I know... but there is a point (aside from sexism in this country). The mother cannot operate because there is a conflict of interest, and it is built into their Code of Ethics. There is no hospital that would let her, even if she wanted to. So why are we letting our politicians introduce, or even vote on bills that involve an industry who gives them campaign funds? I'm speaking of course, about Rep. Lamar Smith. The man that introduced a bill called the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), and had it shot down by the millions of internet users. Now, I'm not going to beat a dead horse and explain why this bill was wrong, since I've already done that and the bill was squashed anyway. My question is, why are we letting Rep. Smith introduce a bill that involves the industry that gives him the most campaign contributions?