Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT) is sponsoring PIPA in the Senate and Congressman Lamar Smith (R-TX) is carrying SOPA in the House of Representatives. The bills are backed by Hollywood and big media ostensibly as a way to stop online piracy and protect copyrights. They are however bad ideas that could lead to the censorship of websites like ThorntonWeather.com.
These ineffective and shortsighted bills would place undue burdens on websites and Internet providers. Any company with an intellectual copyright claim could for example force Google to remove links to an accused site, prevent credit card companies from processing payments to the accused site, and much more. This could all be done without any legal proceedings at all.
ThorntonWeather.com takes great care to respect and honor other’s property in written, audio or visual form and we are proud of our efforts to never take liberty with someone else’s hard work. However, under SOPA / PIPA, our site could be brought down simply if someone posted a comment that contained copyrighted text or linked to a site that hosted copyrighted material.
This simply is unacceptable. ThorntonWeather.com will be joining other sites like Wikipedia, Tucows, and Reddit in the blackout to take place tomorrow.
Please watch the video below for more information and contact your Senators and Congressman and urge them to vote against SOPA / PIPA. You can also learn more about the dangers of SOPA / PIPA via this infographic and at the links below the video.
PROTECT IP / SOPA Breaks The Internet from Fight for the Future on Vimeo.
Watch the video · American Censorship page · View the Infographic
Read SOPA on OpenCongress · Read PIPA on OpenCongress