PIPA and SOPA Will Break the Internet (Creating a Cataclysmic Domino Effect)
PIPA and SOPA will break the internet. They will create more lawsuits, crush the sharing of information, cripple startups, and stifle innovation.
I posted this on January 18, 2012. Many sites (boingboing.net, reddit.com and wikipedia.org to name a few) are going dark today to protest SOPA and PIPA. Because of the significantly lower traffic of this site, Show Us Your Clips will not be going dark, but not out of a lack of solidarity or laziness.
Instead, I chose to post Kirby Ferguson’s video about specifically what widespread and (probably ) permanent harm SOPA and PIPA will do to the internet. Because of how Show Us Your Clips appears to operate, posting this video will have more effect than blacking out the site for one day. If you don’t know about SOPA or PIPA, this is a good place to start. If it’s still January 18th, check out Google’s Homepage. They put together a fantastic End Piracy, Not Liberty page.
If you already know about SOPA and PIPA and want to do more, this video was put together to help Fight For The Future’s campaign against these bills. One of my favorite organizations involved in stopping SOPA and PIPA is the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF). They do wonderful work protecting your (our) freedoms online. If you’d like to get involved beyond signing Google’s petition or donating to the EFF, AmericanCensorship.org has instructions on how to contact your senator. Whoever you end up speaking to, please remember to be patient, polite, and informative. No one likes getting yelled at or preached to.
Finally, if SOPA and PIPA pass, sites like this will disappear because no matter the level of enjoyment people like me get out of sharing excellent content and having wonderful conversations about it, it won’t be worth getting sued into oblivion. And that is the environment SOPA and PIPA will create.
