Can we all say a big "Thank You!" to Fluther for joining the blackout to defeat SOPA/PIPA and Internet censorship?

Our members of Congress, most of who know about as much about the Internet as Australian Aborigines do about quantum mechanics, were all set to pass a bill they had been bribed (lobbied) to support, a bill written by the big ISPs like Comcast, RCN, Verizon, AT&T etc and the Motion Picture Industry Association et al. The idea was to stop piracy of copyrighted content via the Internet. But the bill was written by lobbyist that haven’t a clue how to actually do that. It would not have worked to stop the pirates. What we are currently doing works better. What it would have done is blocked access to Google, Wikipedia, Facebook, Twitter, Yahoo!, Reedit, Fluther, Sodahead and just abnout all sites that allow user input or list sites that allow user input.

It would have also made it easy for political and corporate interest to shut down any website critical of them by complaining that it had some copyrighted material on it.

I feel like I am a fair witness on this. I have a book in print, and earn royalties on it. I do want Internet pirates shut down. If content creators can’t profit from the tremendous effort it takes to write a book or produce a movie; we will all suffer because they will not create. We’ll be left with idiotic YouTube videos of idiots doing inane things that sometimes get them maimed or killed as our new Media.

But I am also a web developer with a small business that would have likely been destroyed by the idiotic way this bill was written. And I am not the only business that would have suffered. Thousands of other tech firms would have been ruined and millions of jobs would likely have been lost. Here’s a list of the special interests that bought this piece of tripe and tried to ram it through congress, and a list to the people who came to the defense of the Internet, trying to stop such censorship. My hat’s off to Fluther for joining the blackout. I hope you will join me.