While all the other sites on the Internet are dimming the lights in protest of the Stop Online Piracy Act and the Protect IP Act, the link lovers at Fark.com have gone bright white to show their support of the controversial bills — because they are just sick and tired of having to do their jobs every day. [More]
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XKCD Creator: I Wouldn't Be Able To Do My Job Without A Free Internet
By 1.18.12
We here at Consumerist have been posting links to Randall Munroe’s online comic xkcd for more than five years. So we weren’t shocked to see that today’s xkcd dealt directly with the topic of the day — the Stop Online Piracy Act and the Protect IP Act. [More]
Cheezburger CEO Ben Huh: Bipartisan Support Of SOPA & PIPA Smacks Of Money
By 1.18.12
We’ve already heard the rallying cry against SOPA/PIPA, urging us not to let the LOLcats die, so we thought we’d ask the king of the LOLcats himself, Cheezburger CEO Ben Huh, to weigh in on SOPA. He explains why his sites are standing against SOPA today and how these potential laws would threaten the Internet as we know it. [More]
Reddit's Alexis Ohanion: Piracy Can Be A Great Opportunity
By 1.18.12
Reddit is set to black out for 12 hours starting at 8 a.m. ET this morning. But in advance of that temporary shutdown, the site’s co-founder Alexis Ohanion has been making the media rounds to speak out against the Stop Online Piracy Act. [More]
MPAA Calls Anti-SOPA Blackouts A "Gimmick" To Punish Politicians & Turn Us All Into "Corporate Pawns"
By 1.18.12
The Motion Picture Association of America cares about you. It doesn’t want children to see boobs or hear curse words (though rampant bloodshed is cool) and it doesn’t want you to turn into a pawn of the big corporations that it says are really behind today’s blackouts at sites like Craiglist and Wikipedia, which everyone knows are both monstrous examples of corporate greed. [More]
Pirate Bay Joins SOPA Protest By Sort Of Blacking Out For The Day
By 1.18.12
For years, BitTorrent tracker site thePirateBay.org has been one of, if not the biggest target in the music, movie, software and video game industries’ anti-piracy efforts. So it might come as no surprise that, along with many, many other sites, the folks at Pirate Bay decided to shutter for the day today… well, sort of. [More]
Google's Matt Cutts On Why SOPA Is Bad For Everyone
By 1.18.12
As the Stop Internet Piracy Act and the Protect IP Act have inched their way into the headlines, a number of people — even some who make their living on this here Internet — have shrugged and said things like, “I don’t download any pirated movies, so why should this bother me?” So we spoke to Matt Cutts, Principal Engineer at Google, who gave his feelings on why we should all be concerned. [More]
Anti-SOPA Protests Planned Around The Country Today
By 1.18.12
Even though the House Judiciary Committee has moved its planned hearing on the Stop Internet Piracy Act from today until February — perhaps hoping that we’ll all be too hungover from Super Bowl beer and wings to care — that’s not going to stop people who are peeved about SOPA and its Senate counterpart, the Protect IP Act, from taking to the streets to have their say. [More]
Google Breaks Down SOPA Opposition By The Numbers
By 1.18.12
As you probably already know, a number of websites have gone silent today in protest of the Stop Online Piracy Act currently being considered by Congress and the Senate’s similarly controversial Protect IP Act. And while Google, which has previously voiced its opposition to both pieces of legislation, didn’t shut down for the day, it is making its feelings known to the public. [More]
Jeff Jarvis Weighs In: SOPA "Changes The Architecture Of Our Greatest Tool Of Speech"
By 1.18.12
To say that Jeff Jarvis, the media blogger, journalist and author behind BuzzMachine.com, is against SOPA/PIPA, would be more than an understatement. When we connected with him to prepare for our “SOPA/PIPA Only” content for today, Jarvis made it clear that he’s as anti-SOPA as anyone could be. [More]
Every Protest Needs An Anthem And This Anti-SOPA Ditty's Got LOLcat Jokes
By 1.18.12
If only every political issue or very important cause could be explained with a song about LOLcats, maybe everyone would enjoy a higher level of understanding. Case in point: SOPA/PIPA is a big deal to those of us who enjoy the current form of the Internetz. No one wants those adorable cats to go anywhere, right? [More]
Craig Newmark Talks To Us About SOPA: "Things Can Go Bad Real Fast"
By 1.18.12
Craigslist founder Craig Newmark has been a vocal opponent of SOPA and PIPA with good reason: According to Newmark, if the bills as currently written were passed into law, “any site with any kind of user provided content could be shut down easily. For example, Wikipedia, Amazon, craigslist. Any media site with commenting.” In an email interview with Consumerist, Newmark (who is also a member of the Board of Directors of our parent company) warned that, despite White House opposition, and recent changes to the bills to limit DNS filtering, consumers should still be concerned. [More]
Why Wikipedia Decided To Join The Blackout And Potentially Threaten Your Homework
By 1.18.12
Wikipedia prides itself on being neutral… so why is it taking itself down to protest something political? According to their official explanation of the protest decision, the members of the Wikimedia Foundation feel that “although Wikipedia’s articles are neutral, its existence is not.” [More]
SOPA/PIPA And What It Means To You: Ben Parr Explains It All
By 1.18.12
Sorting through all the SOPA/PIPA related news today is bound to get overwhelming. Sites like Wikipedia, Reddit, those in the Cheezburger network, Boing Boing, Mozilla and more are dark to protest the proposed anti-piracy laws. We’ve roped in a few industry experts and veterans to help sort out what exactly is going on here, and were lucky enough to get Mashable’s former and formidable editor-at-large Ben Parr to weigh in. [More]
SOPA and PIPA Far From Dead, Despite Concerns Of White House And Changes To Bills
By 1.17.12
Although the White House this weekend expressed “serious reservations” about elements of the pending anti-piracy bills SOPA and PIPA, and House leaders have said they will not conduct hearings on their bill any time soon, the legislation is far from dead. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said this weekend that he hopes to open debate on the Senate’s version later this month. And House sponsor Lamar Smith said he will continue work on that chamber’s version. Internet protests planned for tomorrow, in which some of the web’s largest sites will go offline for 24 hours, are expected to go ahead as scheduled. [More]
