http://sopastrike.com/

Tomorrow, Wednesday, January 18th, my site, along with thousands of others will be going dark in protest of the legislation the US is attempting to pass. They claim it’s to stop copyright infringement. The reality is, it’s just censorship. Of all the times I’ve seen screaming about censorship on the internet over the years, this is the time to scream, kids. Private companies can censor you on their playground if they want. THIS is the U.S. Federal government censoring you… THIS is the one that is illegal!

As an American Citizen, I am furious at this attempt, and rock solid in my belief that this legislation is not only unnecessary, but ineffectual, unconstitutional, and based on the false premise that internet “piracy” is harmful to the U.S. and world economies.

As a citizen of the Internet for more than fifteen years, I am furious. The Internet cannot be under the jurisdiction of any one nation and remain the free marketplace of ideas, art, information and social interaction it wants to be. For years, we have tut-tutted at China and other nations for censoring the internet… and now the US wants to do the same, with the major difference being that vast numbers of services that are now part of the infrastructure of the internet itself are based in US Jurisdictions.

This is the problem. We need to get the Internet out of the jurisdiction of any one nation.

Perhaps Google should consider moving its corporate headquarters to Antarctica? Or maybe buy a small island in the Pacific?  Queen Elizabeth, will you sell St. Barts to the Internet if we put enough money in your paypal account? Or maybe we could buy out Haiti and the Dominican Republic together, or Nigeria… free the web, stop hunger and bring peace to a nation, in a single blow!

I don’t know.

But what I do know is that nobody should have the right to decide for everybody. Go dark.

http://sopastrike.com/