Well that was an interesting experience. Yesterday, we joined thousands of sites in what was apparently the largest Web blackout protest in history to oppose two very dangerous bills in the US Congress: the “PROTECT-IP Act” (PIPA) in the Senate and “Stop Online Piracy Act” (SOPA) in the House of Representatives. This seems to have had a useful effect, as a dozen or so people in Congress have reversed their position, and Obama’s administration released a statement in opposition to the bills. So now we’re back to the business of making new media content work!
Just quick note today: We’ll be joining the blackout protest against the SOPA / PIPA legislation tomorrow (Jan 18th), along with Reddit, Wikipedia, and many other sites.
Even Google will be doing something about it, as I understand it. This legislation could be extremely devastating to us, as it targets many of the people who we rely on as distributors, and of course, on viewers. Furthermore, it is unnecessary to create legislation like this as the threat of so-called “piracy” is vastly overblown.
