SOPA Protest

Yesterday many sites either went black, or symbolically covered elements of their sites to protest the SOPA/PIPA bills going though congress. If you’d like to understand what’s so bad about these bills, the Khan Academy does a pretty good job of covering the issues. One of the funniest protests is this one.

But seriously, as the singer asks about a minute in ‘Why, why are laws a thing you can buy?’ Why is it that congress can’t work together to work out important things like budgets, but  a bill that is just to benefit one particular industry seemed to be on a fast track to passing until some of the internet giants realized what it was going to do. Perhaps SOPA wouldn’t have gone after YouTube to start with, they would have started with little sites like Scratch, who wouldn’t have the money to fight the shut down even if the ‘infringement’ was really fair-use.

SOPA may look like it’s dead, but really it’s just gone into a quiet room for some re-working – after all, the RIAA and movie industries have paid big bucks to get something written into law. Don’t let it happen.