Jim Guckin

    First, I would like to apologize to anyone who found the blackout of this site inconvenient.  We blacked out our site in solidarity with 75,000+ sites who joined together, in the largest online protest  (to date), to try to let congress know to stop the SOPA and PIPA bills from passing.  These bills would kill the internet as we know it, and anyone with a real ear to the internet could tell you they wouldn’t solve the problem, and people who wanted to, could have gotten around it.

Though the day of the internet protest is over, this doesn’t mean our actions should also be over.  As long as there are non-technical people in congress trying to regulate what they don’t understand (yea, I know they do it a lot), these bills will always be a threat and lurking in the shadows.

While I understand the concerns of the people pushing SOPA/PIPA to protect their intellectual property, there is no reason to destroy the internet.  The internet has worked so well because it is free and limiting it only hurts those who don’t know the ways around it.  But you’re asking what you could do to help:

Here are a few easy things you can do:

• Educate yourself about how SOPA and PIPA work, don’t just take anyone’s word for it.
• Print and mail letters to your state’s senators and representatives, urging them not to support this. Physical mail is more complicated to ignore than an email. It piles up. You can find representatives’ addresses here and senators’ addresses here. Remember that PIPA is a Senate bill and SOPA is a House of Representatives bill.
• Call your senators and representatives on the phone and urge them not to support the bills. See the above links for phone numbers or click here to get a quick list of representatives based on where you live.

Let your elected representatives know that censoring the Internet is something you do not and cannot support. Congressmen care about getting reelected. If everyone reading this plays their part, these bills will be killed.