Poll: What Do You Think of PIPA and SOPA?
Many popular sites are going black out of protest today. What's your opinion on the legislation?
Many popular websites, including Wikipedia and Reddit, are going black Wednesday to protest the House's Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Senate's Protect IP Act (PIPA).
Both SOPA and PIPA are meant to attack the problem of foreign websites that sell pirated or counterfeit goods, according to The Washington Post. More than 7,000 sites are participating, reports The Huffington Post. To see a list of some of the big sites participating in the blackout, click here.
Patch and AOL are not participating in the blackout, along with sites like Twitter, Facebook and Google, although the search engine has blacked out its logo in solidarity with the protests.
"As written, we cannot support the bills," said Tekedra N. Mawakana, AOL's senior vice president of public policy, in a statement. "We believe an open Internet is critical for innovation, job creation, and the sustained growth of Internet businesses. We are in the process of working directly with lawmakers
to improve the bills."
Joan Seites
3:45 pm on Wednesday, January 18, 2012
Senator Whitehouse is one of the co-sponsors of PIPA.
Erin B.
4:03 pm on Wednesday, January 18, 2012
The bills, as written, express a fundamental misunderstanding of how the Internet works, as has been widely expressed. The tech sector, especially those organizations with sites with user-generated/fed/filtered content (Google, Wikipedia, every social networking site, et al), were not included in the formation of either bill, resulting in uninformed and reckless policy proposals. This will cause headaches at best and outright censorship at worst so they must not be allowed to pass as written. I'm all for preserving intellectual property rights but this is simply not the way to go about doing it.
Still Hope
6:35 pm on Wednesday, January 18, 2012
I use SOPA to clean my PIPA
solomon
7:30 pm on Wednesday, January 18, 2012
"Senator Whitehouse is one of the co-sponsors of PIPA."
no surprise there... The man never had a thought that was his own
Gail Eastwood-Stokes
12:20 am on Thursday, January 19, 2012
These bills are about unconstitutional government censorship, and miss the boat on anti-piracy policy almost entirely. I hope Senator Whitehouse is merely misguided --piracy IS a problem, after all. But these bills are Big Government's way to take away more of our rights, not actually solve the problem they pretend to address.
MoonBeamWatcher
11:44 am on Friday, January 20, 2012
Gail Eastwood-Stokes, Amen! You nailed it, and "Ron Maine" came close!
With todays print and electronic "MEDIA" interested in $
and doing NOTHING about (costly) investigative reporting
all the "Kings (horses) and all the Kings men" have to be
THRILLED over the REMOTE possibility of this passing!
Ed Renehan
8:12 am on Thursday, January 19, 2012
Amazed to find Sheldon a co-sponsor of this lousy legislation. Very bad move.
Ron Maine
10:39 am on Thursday, January 19, 2012
This type of legislation should not be written by Senators and Representatives who are not sufficiently competent to understand what is required. Legislation regarding the INTERNET should be prepared by technical specialists and then submitted for peer review prior to being brought before congress.
Meesh
7:50 pm on Thursday, January 19, 2012
Please let us educated people prevail when it comes down to passing these bills.
MoonBeamWatcher
11:35 am on Friday, January 20, 2012
TRUST me . . . for GOVERNmentum to operate this has to be
the GREATEST joke since YOU kicked the slats out of your crib!
Even used car salesmen (persons) are held in higher regard (trust)
then our elected LeaKers! With the likes of Eric Holder in the mix
TODAY, bringing litigation and "DETAINING" whistle-blowers for
this kind of legislation to be enacted is the KISS of Death for Freedom,
Democracy and the American way! Think even China is cheering with US
Dollars for this to come to pass!