A new piece of American legislation, SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) has been getting a lot of attention the last few weeks. The purpose of the bill is to put a dent in online piracy by allowing the US government to dictate ISPs block access to sites hosting copyrighted materials.
Companies including Google, Facebook, Twitter, PayPal, Yahoo! and Wikipedia are said to be discussing a coordinated blackout of services to demonstrate the potential effect SOPA would have on the Internet, something already being called a “nuclear option” of protesting. Reddit also joins the Anti SOPA blackout.
Markham Erickson, executive director of trade association NetCoalition said:
This type of thing doesn’t happen because companies typically don’t want to put their users in that position. The difference is that these bills so fundamentally change the way the Internet works. People need to understand the effect this special-interest legislation will have on those who use the Internet.
