Today is official “shutdown SOPA and PIPA” day on the Web. You’ve probably heard that Wikipedia is down for the day, and even LOLcats has a protest popup.
The White House told Congress it’s the bills that need to be taken offline, so to speak, and to take another approach to curtail online piracy. Politico reports the bills are on “life support” and even some former sponsors are changing their minds.
I personally think dealing with online piracy is going to take big-time international cooperation among nations. I question whether there is anything the U.S. Congress can do unilaterally that will have any impact. Blocking sites? Hah. Hackers will always find a way.
That said, I really do wish someone would find a way to deal with jerks who steal other people’s intellectual property. I’m not making any money from this site any more, but people who steal and re-publish entire articles from my Buddhism site are depriving me of page views for my work, which really is money out of my pocket. But the worst offenders are in Asia, where even the mighty New York Times Company’s lawyers can’t get to them.
Anyway, if you want to weigh in, Tim F. suggests how.