Opposing SOPA and PIPA – If Anybody Read This Site in the First Place, I’d Black It Out

I love to see the Internet blackouts going on today in protest of SOPA and PIPA. The public needs to understand that this legislation could put the sites they use every day at risk of private-industry censorship without any due process. I wrote this email to one of my Senators, Dick Durbin, who’s currently still supporting the legistlation:

Dear Senator Durbin:

As an Internet professional and a near-continuous user of all the wonderful benefits brought to us by this amazing technology, I urge you to oppose the SOPA and PIPA acts currently being debated in Congress. As a former employee of several online magazines, I fully recognize the need to fight piracy of intellectual property, but this poorly written legislation will break the fundamental structures of the Internet and will serve as a dangerous permission slip for private-industry censorship of websites without any due process. Please vote to protect America’s most dynamic economic sector, the interactive industry, by opposing this legislation and any attempts to clamp down on the economic freedom of the Internet.

Sincerely,
Patrick Stack
Chicago, IL

So get on Google’s anti-SOPA/PIPA page and register your opposition. Take it from an Internet dude – you don’t want this to pass.