Today, you’ll find that many of your favorite sites will be blacked out from 8am until 8pm in protest of SOPA and PIPA.  What are SOPA and PIPA you ask? 

The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Protect IP Act (PIPA) aim to protect copyrighted materials from illegal distribution, especially by foreign sites. It tries to stop the black market by hindering online forms of payment and advertising for copyrighted goods.

Sounds good in theory except that under the legislation, they have the authority to shut down websites whether or not administrators have done anything wrong.

Ultimately, SOPA is a form of censorship and could really hurt American innovation and business.  Opponents of the legislation question whether it would really crackdown on black marketeers.

You can read more about the issues with SOPA:

From WordPress

and

From CopyBlogger

and

From Blog.Reddit

Let’s say a commenter posts copyrighted material on one of your sites.  Well, under these acts, the site could be shut down, no questions asked.  Not only is this a huge deal for bloggers, but what would it do to Facebook and Twitter?  Can you even imagine what this would do to a site like YouTube? 

I’m all for protect copyrights, but this just isn’t the way to do it.