Anti- SOPA & PIPA Blackout Day

[Alan]

Offtopic to bikes but meta to any and all web forums and much other Internet traffic:

You've probably already heard about it, and you've probably seen that www.bikeportland.org is black (and if there's a way to get past the splash page, I've not figured it out, yet), but in case you want to know more and *nudge*nudge* take action such as calling, writing or emailing your congress critters, or signing an online petition, here are some more sources of info:

https://www.google.com/landing/takeaction/
http://sopastrike.com/
https://www.cdt.org/ and https://www.cdt.org/#
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PROTECT_IP_Act
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stop_Online_Piracy_Act

[wsbob]

Saw bikeportland's blackout page last night. Doubt there's a way to get around it. Craigslist also is observing the day with a blackout page, but there's a link to craigslist at the bottom of the page.

I haven't yet looked into what the 'SOPA & PIPA' thing is, but while dropping in on wikipedia, maybe bikeportland's blackout page too, I've noticed the phrase 'Anti-piracy' mentioned as being a motivation to write and pass the acts in question. Common knowledge is that fighting the theft of intellectual property is important.

As I've come across the blackout pages that are attempting to rally opposition to the proposed acts, something that seems missing, is a short synopsis of what the objectives of the acts are, including what the basic objections to the acts are.

Providing links on the blackout pages, to various websites having detailed information about the acts is fine, but it seems an opportunity to inform people as to what the acts stand to do is being missed with the absence of some kind of short story about the acts, on the blackout pages themselves.

Later today, I may go over to the linked pages and look into what they have to say, but I'd just soon a bit of that info had been presented on craigslist and bp's blackout pages. If it had been, I'd already have had a sense of what's going on. With that bit of info, my interest might have piqued to click on the links and spend more concentration reading detailed info there.

[Alan]

EFF has a not-too-long article on SOPA here:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2012/0...ng-free-speech

Lots of links to more info, too.