Oppose SOPA / PIPA

PROTECT IP / SOPA Breaks The Inter­net from Fight for the Future on Vimeo.

I usu­al­ly do not take polit­i­cal stands here on GenealogyMedia.com, but two pro­posed laws could have a chill­ing effect on the open­ness that has allowed the Inter­net to flour­ish. The Stop Online Pira­cy Act (SOPA, PDF) in the US House and Pro­tect Intel­lec­tu­al Prop­er­ty Act (PIPA, PDF) have the stat­ed goals of pro­tect­ing prop­er­ty rights and stop­ing pira­cy of intel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty. Most peo­ple do not dis­agree with those goals.

Red­dit, Boing­Bo­ing, Mozil­la, Word­Press, Twit­Pic, MoveOn.org and the ICan­HasCheezBurg­er net­work, as well as Gene­ablog­gers, have gone offline in protest against SOPA/PIPA. Google has blacked out their logo.

Please look into these laws, and con­tact your Con­gressper­son and your Sen­a­tors. We have plen­ty of laws to con­trol pira­cy, and do not need more. We espe­cial­ly do not need laws designed to lim­it the secu­ri­ty of the Domain Name Ser­vice by forc­ing Inter­net ser­vice providers and con­tent providers to remove links to or not direct traf­fic to sites accused of hav­ing allowed or par­tic­i­pat­ed in pira­cy. This law sim­ply goes too far, and threat­ens the free dis­sem­i­na­tion of ideas that has made the Inter­net thrive. Twit­ter, Face­book, YouTube, GoogleRead­er, Red­dit, Word­Press, and Tum­blr are among some of the obvi­ous exam­ples of inno­v­a­tive web­sites that would not have been able to stay in busi­ness if con­stant­ly harassed by the kinds of laws that SOPA and PIPA rep­re­sent.