International Internet media mogul GOOGLE has now joined the SOPA strike set for tomorrow 1/18/2012. REDDIT, MOZILLA, WORDPRESS, WIKEPEDIA, ITP V.012 and thousands of websites, blogs and FACEBOOK users have committed to tomorrows strike against SOPA.
The Stop Online Piracy Act would criminalize websites featuring "pirated and copy written" material making the Internet fair use policy obsolete. SOPA opponents state that the SOPA bill is to broad as written and could censor the web infringing on first amendment rights, civil liberties and freedom of speech.
The SOPA/PIPA bill vote will hit the U.S. congress 1/24/2012..
ITP V.012 will also join the anti SOPA strike going "DARK" 1/18/2012, as ITP V.012 will NOT post on 1/18/2012 for 24 hours.
EDITORS NOTE: :LOOKS AT FEEDJIT WIDGET: Without GOOGLE, whom owns/sponcers BLOGSPOT/BLOGGER, as BLOGGER is consolidated with GOOGLE/GOOGLE+, ITP V.012 would be NOTHING, NADA.. ITP would have ZERO READERS without GOOGLE as most readers "stumble upon" ITP through the GOOGLE search engines. EVERYONE on the internet thanks GOOGLE for joining the SOPA STRIKE.
http://fightforthefuture.org/
FROM BEIBERISRIGHT.ORG:
Justin Bieber speaks out against S. 978 by Fightforthefuture
FROM HUFFINGTON POST:
WASHINGTON -- Google will join thousands of tech activists, entrepreneurs and corporations on Wednesday in protesting the proposed Stop Online Piracy Act, a controversial bill that has generated national outrage among Internet experts.
On Wednesday, more than 7,000 websites are expected to voluntarily "go dark," by blocking access to their content to protest the bill, according to organizers of SOPAStrike.com. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid plans to bring the measure to a vote next week. Some of the biggest names on the Internet plan to participate in the blackout, including Wikipedia, Mozilla, Reddit and WordPress. On Tuesday, Google stopped short of vowing to take down its popular search engine, but said it would change its home page to show solidarity with protesters.
"Like many businesses, entrepreneurs and web users, we oppose these bills because there are smart, targeted ways to shut down foreign rogue websites without asking American companies to censor the Internet," said a Google spokeswoman in a written statement provided to HuffPost. "So tomorrow we will be joining many other tech companies to highlight this issue on our U.S. home page."
While Hollywood movie studios and major record labels have lauded the bill as a robust effort to crack down on online copyright violations, Internet experts maintain that the tools proposed for the legislation would hamper efforts to improve online security and threaten the basic functioning of the Internet.
Tech companies have been raising objections to the bill since the Senate version, Protect IP, was introduced last spring. Free speech experts also argue that the measure's basic anti-piracy tool would risk seriously violating the First Amendment in allowing the government and private companies to shut down entire websites accused of piracy without a trial or even a traditional court hearing.
In addition to the Web protests, thousands of New York City tech activists and entrepreneurs are preparing for a Wednesday protest outside the Manhattan offices of Sens. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Kristin Gillibrand (D-N.Y.). Both Schumer and Gillibrand formally support Protect IP. Increasingly in recent years the Big Apple has become an active hub for tech firms, with many new companies and their venture capital supporters locating there rather than Silicon Valley.
The anti-SOPA event is being organized NY Tech Meetup, a trade group representing all aspects of the New York technology community. The group is expecting more than 1,500 members and speakers from leading tech companies to show up at the Wednesday protest, from 12:30 p.m. to 2 p.m, at the senators' Manhattan offices, at 780 Third Ave.
"We're gonna have people get on a soapbox with a bullhorn," NY Tech Meetup Chairman Andrew Rasiej told HuffPost. "We're not in a theater; we're in the street protesting."
The White House announced on Saturday its formal opposition to SOPA and Protect IP, setting off a legislative scramble on Capitol Hill as lawmakers on both sides of the issue sought to shore up support ahead of the Senate vote.
FROM THE LA TIMES:
What would the world be like without the Internet? Fire up your browser and see what you can't do.
In the first strike of its kind, hundreds of popular sites such as Wikipedia, Reddit and Boing Boing were scheduled to temporarily shut down Wednesday to protest a pair of anti-piracy bills that they say essentially amount to censorship of the Internet.
The prospect of a day without the websites set off a frenzy in the hours leading up to the strike, which was slated to begin Tuesday night, with parents urging their children to do their homework early and tech-savvy users posting instructions for how to access cached Wikipedia pages during the blackout.
"If Wikipedia is going down, I'm going down with it," wrote Twitter user Mariellesmind, who was among thousands that filled the microblogging site with panicked, profanity-filled tweets.
"Terrified about the Wikipedia outage," tweeted Los Angeles resident Chandra Moore. "I was told to use an encyclopedia if I have a question, but I won't even be able to Wiki what one is."
The Internet's biggest power players, including Google, Facebook and YouTube, were planning to stay up and running, but the shutdown of the other sites and the ensuing anxiety underscored the breadth and influence of the world's Internet companies, as well as Americans' dependence on them.
Strike organizers say the online grass-roots campaign is intended to inform the public about the Stop Online Piracy Act and the Protect Intellectual Property Act, which aim to crack down on foreign websites that traffic in pirated movies, music and counterfeit goods.
Internet companies have broadened the debate, recasting it from one about piracy and digital copyright protection to one about Internet freedom. Calling the bills well intentioned but seriously flawed, they say SOPA in the House and PIPA in the Senate are threats to free speech that could stifle the Internet economy, drive up legal costs and lead to censorship or the shutdown of some websites.
The proposed legislation "creates a punishing Internet censorship regime and exports it to the rest of the world," said a statement on Boing Boing, a group blogging site.
"Boing Boing could never coexist with a SOPA world: we could not ever link to another website unless we were sure that no links to anything that infringes copyright appeared on that site," the company said.
Erik Martin, general manager at Reddit, a social news community that was scheduled to shut down for 12 hours Wednesday, said the bills were "an existential threat to our company and the industry we work in."
"We try to be pretty agnostic when it comes to content, news, politics," Martin said. "This is the first time we've really stepped out and made a strong statement as a company. We feel we don't have a choice."
Calling the move "unprecedented," Wikipedia editors said they would black out the English-language version of the online encyclopedia for 24 hours starting at midnight Eastern time. In a statement posted on the site, the company said that it believed the bills, if passed, "would be devastating to the free and open Web."
"In making this decision, Wikipedians will be criticized for seeming to abandon neutrality to take a political position. That's a real, legitimate issue. We want people to trust Wikipedia, not worry that it is trying to propagandize them," said Sue Gardner, executive director of the Wikimedia Foundation. "But although Wikipedia's articles are neutral, its existence is not."
But supporters of the legislation say the online campaign is misguided. In a statement Tuesday, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Lamar Smith (R-Texas), lead sponsor of SOPA, called the Wikipedia blackout a publicity stunt "that does a disservice to its users by promoting fear instead of facts."
"It is ironic that a website dedicated to providing information is spreading misinformation about the Stop Online Piracy Act," Smith said. "Perhaps during the blackout, Internet users can look elsewhere for an accurate definition of online piracy."
But the Internet sites aren't backing down.
Other companies, including Scribd and the Cheezburger family of websites, were planning to put up "roadblocks" on their sites that provide information on the bills and links for users to contact their local lawmakers. Users can bypass the roadblocks and access the sites as usual.
"The intended effect either way is to shock and awe the public into recognizing that there's still a big threat to their 1st Amendment rights," said Ben Huh, chief executive and founder of Cheezburger, a network of user-generated humor websites that includes Fail Blog and I Can Has Cheezburger.
Search engine giant Google, meanwhile, said it would use its home page to highlight its opposition to the bills. And Craigslist got an early start to the protest, placing a red, white and blue message on its home page telling users to "help put a stop to this madness before it's too late."
The backlash against SOPA and PIPA and the companies that support them has been mounting for months. Microblogging site Tumblr in November redirected users to a page that asked them to contact legislators to oppose the bill, and Scribd did its own self-censorship last month in protest. After users boycotted GoDaddy.com late last year, the domain registrar said it saw a spike in domain transfers and subsequently withdrew its support of SOPA.
The swell of online opposition persuaded the White House to call for lawmakers to remove the most controversial provision from the legislation, which would have let Internet service providers block access from the United States to foreign websites focused on pirated materials. Both bills, which had been expected to sail through Congress, are now facing major changes amid the uproar.
Sascha Meinrath, director of the New America Foundation's Open Technology Initiative, said the bills set "a horrendous precedent globally" and that much of the content users put online — such as open publishing, crowd-sourced information gathering or comments sections — could all become "incredibly dangerous" if the bills passed.
"We would end up in a situation where we're trying to do needlepoint with harpoons," he said. "You can't target only pirated information, content or media without getting tons of collateral damage that removes entirely legal content."
As a screenwriter, East Hollywood resident Steven Darancette, 40, uses Wikipedia often for background information. But he isn't too concerned about the website going dark Wednesday, saying he supports the protest.
"If I need to get research, I'll just Google," he said. "There are also these things called books."
Thanks-Stay Metal, Stay Brutal-\m/ -l-
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