Strike!

I see this as a relatively important day for the internet.

With a lot of large websites "blacking out" such as Wikipedia, Reddit, Mozilla, Minecraft and many many others and Googles own protest(only available in the US) against SOPA and PIPA I do wonder how much other smaller sites are getting visited today.

I'm Scottish, live in Scotland. SOPA and PIPA are American, so why should I care? If they manage to implement everything they want to they could effectively wipes websites from the internet and this will affect us all. The Senate bills might have some vague relevance to protecting copyright but the tools this would give not only the American Government and most annoyingly large corporations in America can and I think likely will be used to for their own good and not just to stop on-line piracy.

There is already the DMCA law which, while not perfect, allows people to petition on-line sites to remove copyrighted work. It works, mostly. With these new laws I can easily see smaller companies and new startups having to deal with a deluge of legalities and that can only stifle talent, slow down technology growth and slow down job creation in the technology sector. I don't see any of that being positive.

Someone who can explain this better and me talks about it here.