From 23:59 tonight until 23:59 tomorrow (Wednesday 18th), Listen Before You Buy will be taking part in the SOPA/PIPA protests by doing a full site blackout for 24 hours.
There will be no regular content from us, that will resume on Thursday. Instead the site will be blacked out and in its place you’ll be met with information on why it is. Chances are as you make your way around the internet during Wednesday you’ll see a bunch of other sites taking part in this too, such as Wikipedia, Reddit, and Boing Boing, along with thousands of others who are doing protests but not full blackouts such as Google, WordPress (which is the software we use to host LBYB), Mozilla, and others.
You may not think that SOPA/PIPA are a big deal (or even if you’re not in the U.S. you might not think it affects you), but you’d be wrong. As basically as we can put it, these two pieces of U.S. legislation, which have very big chances of being passed, would mean that Listen Before You Buy and many many other websites would not able to function as they do now.
Any site that would provide a feature where copyright infringement could take place (such as YouTube, Facebook, Wikipedia, or even Gmail) would be branded as an infringing site, and for smaller sites like us we could be wiped off the face of the internet, no questions asked, just because we may have posted a video or a song that someone else thought infringed on copyrights. Think of a YouTube without the ability to upload videos, or a Facebook where you couldn’t share videos, music, or upload pictures, or a Gmail where you couldn’t send someone anything other than simple text emails. That’s what these bills will do.
Sound scary? It is, but you can do something about it.
- Read the bills (SOPA | PIPA) and educate yourself on what they propose and how it will affect you.
- Write to Congress
- Live outside of the U.S.? Petition the State Department.
- Why SOPA Is Dangerous
- Stop American Cencorship
- A Technical Explanation Of SOPA and PIPA
