Blackout against SOPA and PIPA

The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Protect Intellectual Property Act (PIPA) are two proposed laws in Congress which would completely eliminate the Internet as we know it.  It would make everyone liable for infringing content uploaded by only a few people.  Instead of punishing the actual pirates, these laws would punish any site which mentioned the infringing material.  Without armies of humans to censor uploaded material, any website with a wiki, blog, forum, guestbook, or any other form of user-submitted content would be unsustainable.  If a pirate uploaded copyright-infringing material, or even a link to such material, the website could be held liable for hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of damages or even taken offline.  Search engines which indexed the content and ISPs enabling the delivery of the content would also be held liable.

Everyone who accesses the Internet must stand and fight against this oppressive legislation.  We must let the money-grubbing, corrupt fat cats of Congress and Big Content know that we will not stand for such an abomination.  As part of the protest against SOPA and PIPA, a number of high-profile websites, such as Wikipedia and Reddit, will be shutting down for the day of Wednesday, January 18 2012.  I will be joining these websites in their protest.  No part of michaelmarley.com (including the TVStext service) will be available from 00:00 Wednesday until 00:00 Thursday.  If you have a website, I encourage you to do the same.