While I do not claim to be an expert on the topic of SOPA – the Stop Online Piracy Act currently before the US government – I know enough about it to understand it’s a complete shambles of a solution which only serves to heavily weigh the scales in favour of interested parties. Although it is proposed to be American-based legislation, it will obviously have huge ramifications across the entirety of the Internet.
A number of prominent sites, such as Wikipedia and WordPress, are going offline or heavily censoring content to protes the bill.
While it may certainly draw attention to the situation, I fail to see how undertaking such endeavours will do much. There’s probably much better ways of protesting SOPA, such as encouraging Internet users to donate money towards EFF or other like groups to help fund action.
Twitter user @jaketheyak summed up things nicely with this tweet from earlier today:
“Protesting against SOPA by shutting down your website is like protesting against terrorism by blowing yourself up.”
Obviously, I hope SOPA and it’s sister bill PIPA are shot down and buried, but I feel there are much more effective ways of protesting, raising awareness and encouraging support than shutting down a site for the day.