SOPA & PIPA blackout – Wikipedia, Google, Reddit, Wired all take action
For over a decade, we have spent millions of hours building the largest encyclopedia in human history. Right now, the U.S. Congress is considering legislation that could fatally damage the free and open Internet. - Wikipedia
These bills provide overly broad mechanisms for enforcement of copyright which would restrict innovation and threaten the existence of websites with user-submitted content... - Reddit
We’ve blacked out the headlines on our website homepage today as part of a global internet protest against two radical anti-piracy bills pending in Congress — legislation that threatens to usher in a chilling internet censorship regime here in the U.S. comparable in some ways to China’s “Great Firewall.” - Wired
SOPA is short for 'Stop Online Piracy Act'. It's an act introduced by the US House of Representatives to stop copyright infringement however it will not work.
If this is passed, sites like YouTube could be blocked, just because a user has uploaded an infringing video. It will ruin the net. Google, Wikipedia, Reddit, Twitter and Facebook would be no more.
PIPA is short for 'Protect IP Act'. This gives the US government the power to block any site they would like, at ISP level, from the whole of America. This Act will be abused.
"PIPA would give the government new powers to block Americans' access websites that corporations don't like. The bill lets corporations and the US government censor entire websites and cut sites off from advertising, payments and donations." - http://fightforthefuture.org/pipa/
https://www.google.com/landing/takeaction/sopa-pipa/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:SOPA_initiative/Learn_more
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/jan/18/sopa-blackout-day-of-action-live
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/jan/18/students-mourn-wikipedia-blackout