This Post Censored By SOPA (H.R.3261)

NOTICE

(This post has been removed from this site by order of the United States government for linking to copyright-infringing material.)

Naaah, not really, of course. Our government would never do anything like that.

No, if SOPA passes, they'd never be cracking down on individual posts. Instead, if they found a post, a comment, anything that contained such a link — well, they'd just kick bloodletters.com off the Internet entirely.

Wait a minute, you might be saying, practically every website that exists probably has at least one link somewhere to copyrighted material that shouldn't be there …. They can't be serious, can they?

Serious like a heart attack, kids. This is a stupid, dangerous bill — well, two bills, really, the Protect IP Act (PIPA) in the Senate and the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in the House — and they'll have tremendous consequences that could shut down websites you use every day.

You probably already know about this. Major sites are doing their best to get the word out. Some sites, like Google, are blacking out their logo, like I've done above; other sites, like Wikipedia, are shutting down for the day entirely in protest.

So why am I taking your time to point all this out again? Just so you keep thinking about it. We can't stay silent on this. The bill is dying as we speak, but we've got to keep the pressure up to make sure it stays dead.

So. If you haven't done it yet, go visit americancensorship.org or Google's "End Piracy, Not Liberty" page and sign their petitions.

Not convinced that signing an online petition will do any good? Yeah, me either. Here's a convenient way to contact your representative in Congress:

house.gov: Write Your Representative

Here's a slightly less convenient way to contact your Senator:

Senators of the 112th Congress

I just wrote to Maria Cantwell, Patty Murray, and Jay Inslee, and here's what I told them:

As a voter in your district, I want to urge you to vote "no" on the STOP ONLINE PIRACY/PROTECT IP Act on Jan. 24th.

I understand that online piracy is a problem, but this bill is not the way to attack it. Forcing American social networks, blogs and search engines to censor the Internet only hurts the wrong people, and would have an insurmountable chilling effect on free speech and innovation. The Internet, as it exists, has created millions of jobs and created an inprecedented resource for information and communication, and deserves your protection, not only for the sake of everyone using it today, but for generations to come.

Thank you for your consideration.

Go, do it now. (If you're trapped at home in the snow today, like me, you really have no excuse not to.) You're welcome to use my words above, but we're more likely to be taken seriously with something other than form letters, so please consider writing your own. Thanks.