On January 18 the House Oversight Committee will be holding a hearing on the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), and on that day you might notice that some of your favorite sites will be going dark in protest: this is a sample of what the internet could potentially be like after SOPA. In addition to the sites mentioned below, activists across the Internet from Reddit, Digg, Twitter and Facebook are remaining silent for 12 hours in protest.
In opposition to this censorship bill, Reddit, The Cheezeburger’s network, Boing Boing, Wikipedia (for 24 hours),Major League Gaming, Nuts and Dolts, Destructoid, Piccano, The social Spew network, TriggerPit, FilthyClass as well as FreakOutNation among others will be going dark. A far more extensive list can be seen here. Also going dark, my friends at Anonymous, using the Twitter hashtags, #J18 and #SOPAblackout.
Reddit announced it was going to blackout on January 18th for 12 hours with Reddit co-founder Alexis “kn0thing” Ohanian testifying at the hearing on the bill. Thus far, Digg.com has not weighed in on this controversial issue, so power diggers (those who spend a lot of time on Digg) and a few newer Digg users are uniting for this important cause to keep America from implementing censorship tactics thus taking away our right to Free Speech on the Internet. Because we love Digg, and knowing full well this censorship bill will be detrimental to the news aggregation site, we join Reddit is solidarity.
This is a bipartisan demonstration to educate the public as to what the Internet could resemble if this abomination of an Act is passed and likely will be, or at least PIPA — the Act is more realistically a Censorship Act in line with Iran and China. From every political spectrum, Digg users have united to oppose this abomination of a bill.
Those included in taking a proactive stance on Digg (so far) that do not object to being named, in alphabetical order are:
Absolutelytrue
Adeelarshad82
Adam Jones
Agha
Andy Green
Anomaly100
ArbiInc
Arpineh
BaddBrainz
Badqat
Blinker1315
BoboSmitor
Bossm4n
Bukowsky
CB810
CGdigg
Comgen aka: admin genix – bringing with him: 789 worker geeks, 12 family members and 34 close friends to the list (too many to list individually).
Cranelake
CosmicSurfer
CourageWulf
Davinci
DeafBeat
EMFK
Esornoso
Fcetier
Fyque
jgregc
Johnnr
Justatool
Hasai
Itc518
Jennifer Bailey
JohnDo
Kesk2006
kthorspear
k4b20 (Kai)
Kolding
LouieBaur
MichaelPinto
Mohsinzakaria
Muxmaster
Novenator
Ramun Kamur
Robert Wright
PhilPerspective
Ree Saunders
Shihtzuman
Smurfz
Doc Sockrates
Starmanjones
Subatomicdoc
Tara
Timelessbw
Tinytony
TokesterJokester
Theownerz
ThoughtsonThis
WhoNewMedia
Wjappe
Woodsjransom
Wuggaslady
Other Digg users who would like to join in, leave a comment and you’ll be added to this list.
House Majority Leader Eric Cantor has shelved SOPA but it’s not dead; SOPA’s evil twin PIPA is still on the rampage; PIPA, another bastardized version of Censorship with a cute name which reminds me of a Tele Tubby — except it’s not. It is very real.
Title: Drew Hendricks aka: Smurfz
Big thanks to EMFK
Image: Lorelle
