Going Dark on Jan 18 to Protest SOPA

As a blogger and frequent user of the Internet for both business and personal matters, I - like may, many others including Google, Wikipedia and countless others - I am very concerned about the censorship powers the U. S. House of Representative's proposed Stop Online Piracy Act and it's U. S. Senate equivalent, the PROTECT IP Act, would give the government. The strongest protection from a tyrannical government and abuse of the government's police powers is a free and unfettered press. Nowadays, that press includes the power of the blogosphere. One of the blogs participating in the Internet blackout tomorrow is the Bilerico Project for which I have been a contributor for almost 3 years. Frankly, this legislation is the first step towards government control of the Internet such as exists in China and other dictatorships. Here are highlights from Bil Browning's explanation of the importance of defeating these bills.

This legislation simply gives the government way too much power to censor America's internet and as a minority community that's something that should particularly concern us. While nothing in this suggests it would be used to target the LGBT community, the broad reach of the proposed laws could be used to censor any group worldwide.

This is not a decision I've made lightly. Quite frankly, my income is mostly based on our ad revenue and subtracting an entire day's impressions will take its toll - especially since our traffic has continued to climb.

SOPA, however, gives the government the ability to force search engines to hide bilerico.com, put me in jail, and take all of my ad revenue whenever they decide. This is a longterm decision - one day versus any potential day the government decides.

We will display a black page on every page tomorrow with a message about the importance of defending the freedom of the internet. We'll link readers to more information about SOPA and the protest by Bilerico Project and sites like Google, Reddit, Wikipedia, and Facebook.

To learn more about this threat and to take action, go here. Be assured, I have already registered my opposition.