… but I felt it important today to come online and post about this topic. The more I read, the more I become concerned.
An Alien Parisienne protests SOPA & PIPA today.
Today, sites like Wikipedia, Google and many, many others on the Internet are taking time to protest SOPA and PIPA: the Stop Online Piracy Act and the Protect IP [Intellectual Property] Act.
From Wikipedia:
For over a decade, we have spent millions of hours building the largest encyclopedia in human history. Right now, the U.S. Congress is considering legislation that could fatally damage the free and open Internet. For 24 hours, to raise awareness, we are blacking out Wikipedia. [Main Page statement on January 18, 2012]
SOPA and PIPA represent two bills in the United States House of Representatives and the United States Senate respectively. SOPA is short for the “Stop Online Piracy Act,” and PIPA is an acronym for the “Protect IP Act.” (“IP” stands for “intellectual property.”) In short, these bills are efforts to stop copyright infringement committed by foreign web sites, but, in our opinion, they do so in a way that actually infringes free expression while harming the Internet. [Wikipedia: SOPA and PIPA- Learn More]
Wikipedia, Google, and many others are blacking out their sites for a period of time today, January 18, 2012. Those sites have linked in articles regarding these proposed laws in the American legislative bodies. I urge you to go and read the links (since getting on Wikipedia is difficult today– except on mobile phones or if you disable your Javascript in your browser — you can’t fritter away time looking up crazy stuff! Might as well go and get yourself informed. Once you do, I imagine as a reader of blogs and a user of the Internet, you will join the protest, too).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stop_Online_Piracy_Act
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PROTECT_IP_Act
https://www.google.com/landing/takeaction/
http://en.blog.wordpress.com/2012/01/18/join-our-censorship-protest/ (Please watch the embedded video WordPress has posted at that link, also watchable here on Vimeo. It sums up the situation very nicely.)
http://americancensorship.org/
Sergey Brin (one of the founders of Google) – December 15, 2011 post on Google+ regarding SOPA/PIPA
Go now, get informed, take action by signing the petition or by posting a blog of your own. Let your voice be heard.
May the Free Internet Live Long, and Prosper!
Live Long and Prosper, Free Internet! Spock says so.
Yours,
Paris Karin
an alien parisienne
An Alien Parisienne 
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