For any of you not in the know, you may have awoke today to find a number of your favorite sites down today in protest of the SOPA/PIPA bills being argued on the congressional floor today.
SOPA, or Stop Online Piracy Act, and its cousin PIPA, Protect IP Act, are bills that would be rather damaging to the internet as a whole and be a further wearing down of our 1st Amendment rights.
Because of the broad wording of the bill, entire sites could be taken down with little to no due process if a company complains that their Intellectual Property MIGHT be being used. This would lead to horrible problems with people like us trying to do things legitimately with parody Fair Use, while not actually stopping piracy as pirates will be able to work around it.
I am in no way a legal scholar, so I suggest going here to find out more from people more intelligent than me. But, I do urge you all to go out, contact your representative and help fight this damaging bill.
