last january 18, 2012 - wikipedia launched a massive shutdown in protest of the united states' congress 'stop online piracy act' (sopa) and 'protect intellectual property act' (pipa).
anyone who tried viewing the site will see nothing but a black backdrop with the wikipedia group's strong political standpoint: "imagine a world without free knowledge."
wikipedia is the largest virtual encyclopedia in human history and time and again it has been a testament to how much the internet has evolved and has made a lot of information accessible. and for lawmakers to create bills that would hurt learning not just in the u.s. but the rest of the world and disguise it as a means to fight piracy, is pointless and just lame.
my only question is: why should a free society's fate be governed by u.s. legislators? if they want to censor what can be found and viewed via the world wide web, then the i suppose stricter laws in web hosting should be implemented. there should be more focus on sites that promote smut material - in written form or otherwise. other than that, i would say keep things as they are. 30 or 40 years ago, the web was made from nothing save the most basic of all web languages until finally html came along and believe me, when i was in high school, i thought it was the coolest thing ever. now it has become spectacularly interactive and offers much more than just access to a digital mailbox.
in the fight against their drive to silence free speech, i have placed a blue ribbon icon on both my blogs (erosthebittersweet.blogspot.com and alifetimeofdesire.blogspot.com):
this is not about jumping the bandwagon, but about supporting a truly worthy cause. this is not about making sure that my site remains available so i can rant but about changing the pace of things that have yet to come - in the hopes of giving other generations the chance to enjoy what we have gained from the internet.
for more details, do visit the electronic frontier foundation - it is a non-profit organization that intends to inform and help defend the cause of virtual media citizens and their fight for the right to free speech in the digital world. bloggers, let us not back down and let us form an alliance that will never tolerate the tyranny of those in power. be a proud bearer of the blue ribbon yourself!
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