Today is the international blackout day against SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) and PIPA (Protect Intellectual Property Act), two bills which currently are on their way through the legislative process in the USA and whose aim is to censor our beloved internet - the majority of you already know that.
Like Wikimedia, Google, Wordpress and other internet-affine companies and foundations, also Urbanartcore wants to set at least a small sign of solidarity with all those who are protesting against these content mafia bills, infringing free expression while harming the Internet. We are going to replace the logo with a pixelated version and ask you to join the protests, because these US bills will definitely affect the entire interweb! The reason:
SOPA and PIPA are badly drafted legislation that won’t be effective at their stated goal (to stop copyright infringement), and will cause serious damage to the free and open Internet. They put the burden on website owners to police user-contributed material and call for the unnecessary blocking of entire sites. Small sites won’t have sufficient resources to defend themselves. Big media companies may seek to cut off funding sources for their foreign competitors, even if copyright isn’t being infringed. Foreign sites will be blacklisted, which means they won’t show up in major search engines. And, SOPA and PIPA build a framework for future restrictions and suppression.
For further reading and more info, visit the Wikipedia SOPA page! Web Censorship is Urban Censorship!
Update: Urbanartcore just joined the official SOPA strike - Our main domain will redirect you to the official striking website sopastrike.com!
