Musings @musicandmeaning.com

Only hope can keep me together. Love can mend your life but love can break your heart.
"He had a theory that musicians are incredibly complex, and know far less than other artists what they want and what they are; that they puzzle themselves as well as their friends; that their psychology is a modern development, and has not yet been understood." – E. M. Forster

Wednesday, 18 January 2012

PIPA/SOPA: Seriously?

Just popping in to ask anyone monitoring this site to (1) be aware of PIPA/SOPA (the PROTECT-IP Act and the and U.S. Stop Online Piracy Act), if you’re not already, and (2) join the protest against this proposed legislation. If you are in the U.S., do you know if your U.S. senators and House representative support or oppose the bills?

I’ve blacked out my site for 24 hours for the Jan. 18th strike — not just this creaky old blog but all of my old pages, which still get some random traffic. So if you’re reading this, it’s either a snippet of the RSS feed, or you arrived after the blackout ended; also, if you’re reading this blog entry, chances are that you use the Internet heavily. Do you have your own blog? Do you link to YouTube videos in blog posts or in your emails? Do you use services such as Dropbox to store files? Do you read or participate in any online community sites, or other message boards or forums?

PIPA and SOPA are supposedly about protecting intellectual property/copyrights of content owners, but the methods proposed to “protect” them go way beyond that, and will institute serious measures for all sorts of websites and Internet services, big or small. Take five minutes to check out a summary video (autoplays), and please email or call your senators and rep and let them know that you urge them to vote against PIPA/SOPA. The Senate votes on PIPA on Jan. 24th.

P.S. Thanks for reading, and I hope you are well.

Posted at 12:35 am | Filed under News commentary, Tech/geek

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  1. PIPA/SOPA annoyed you enough to get you to post again? 🙂