As most people knew already, today was the SOPA strike and several anime bloggers like myself have joined in by either blacking out their site or spreading awareness by writing a post about it. If you haven’t known already by now, SOPA and PIPA are two extremely dangerous pieces of legislation that will severely harm freedom of speech, innovation, security and the openness of the Internet. Not only that, it will have profound effects on the Anime Blogosphere as we rely heavily on derivative works to share our thoughts about Anime, which protected under fair use. Most bloggers who didn’t participate and Anime Fans have to realize that this law will not affect everyone in the United States, but everyone if they were to get passed. Therefore, I have been proactively reminding others to keep a close eye on this and take action, even if you are in a different country.
Aside from that, I want to share an exhaustive list that participated or mentioned the bill’s existence (perhaps as an excuse to get out of a post):
- Anime Yume
- Baka Laureate
- Beta-Waffle
- Chikorita157’s Anime Blog (this blog)
- Desu ex Machina
- Ephemeral Dreams
- Ganbatte
- G-Empire
- Just as planned
- Kimaguresan’s road to nowhere
- My Sword is Unbelievably Dull
- Organization Anti-Social Geniuses
- METANORN
- NewAnimeThursday
- Shinde Iie Anime Blog
- Subdued Fangirling
- and others I probably have forgotten…
With that, the blackout was a success as it caught everyone’s attention even though some very ignorant SOPA/PIPA supporters like Chris Dodd still paints this as a “dangerous” gimmick and usual mainstream media supporters like CNN still against the opposition. On the other hand, the large-scale protest had convinced three co-sponsors to drop their support for the SOPA bill along with thirteen senators dropping support for PIPA, which is good news. Still, the fight isn’t over yet, so we still need to keep the pressure on Congress and supporters for both bills. Continue to spread the word to everyone in the fandom, not just the blogosphere and contact congress! We need to effectively kill both bills so we can keep continuing what we enjoy most, blogging about Anime.
Update: Just today, the creator of the SOPA bill killed it off for good. Not only that, PIPA got delayed indefinitely. This is good news for everyone in the internet, not just our fellow Anime Bloggers. Even with this huge victory, we must stay vigilant so future bills that are similar to these won’t pass by us without our knowledge like the “Indefinite Detention” clause in the NDAA. Needless to say, I hope congress will get behind the OPEN Act that will attack the source rather than the free, open and innovative internet.
Anyway, let’s thank the tech companies, our fellow Anime Bloggers and everyone else who spread the word about this disastrous bill and saved us from censorship…
The biggest downside to the Strike, in my opinion, was the fact that the people who ultimately make the decision, really don’t care if we black ourselves out. And even worse (for citizens like me) some representatives really don’t care for public opinion if they’ve already decided to take a side (personally, my representatives and senators only respond to letters or emails that agree with their decisions, they pay people to look through and filter messages that don’t praise the congressperson).
But it’s helpful for big names like Wikipedia and Google to participate, even if some consider Wikipedia trash to academics and older people probably don’t understand what Google means in context of the internet.
Hopefully, SOPA and PIPA will be put down as legislatures get over the fear-mongering and unsound arguments of the overly wealthy media tycoons and general internet-disenters.
This is why it’s best to call or meet in person so that your voice will actually get heard. If they still support it, you can simply vote them out of office in the next election. Considering that this bill can ultimately jepodize their election, they will eventually go against the legislation…
But as they say, once everyone start protesting, the message can no longer be ignored. I feel that this is becoming true as more people learn about these bill and what effect it has to everyone.
True, ignorance is what’ll push this through, activism will kill it. The worst thing that could happen to SOPA/PIPA is for people to know what it actually does.
Amazing it took some blackout fuss to get the anime and manga blogosphere going about it. My feeds and Twitter went from silent to noisy when really is should have been much sooner.
It wasn’t just the Anime Blogosphere, other big websites like Wikipedia, Reddit Google, WordPress and others have joined in the protest. Since they are huge on the internet, everyone was bound to hear about it one way or another and do something about it. Needless to say, I felt that it definitely helped more congress people are now going against the bill.
Thank you very much for joining others in the fight against SOPA/PIPA. I wonder what will happen after the blockbuster news today and yesterday’s battle between Anonymous and the FBI? Let’s keep on fighting till the fog has been cleared for good!
Well, after the DDOS, their site went back on line. While the whole Megaupload thing is a grey area considering that it had some legitimate uses like uploading large documents and stuff, the people who shut it down kind of deserved it although doing such a cyber attack has ethical issues as well (not only that, it’s illegal).
Needless to say, it’s a wakeup call for everyone and everyone should be aware of any piece of legislation that can potentially effect the internet as a whole as Maddox suggested (especially with the NDAA). Could have wish that everyone took it a bit further by voting out the people who still supported these legislation and boycotting the companies that support it.
Hooray! This is terrific news! Thanks for keeping us informed Chikorita this is a big help for those like me! I do follow some politics…well just not enough I know I really should… >.>
It’s great, but Smith has another bill up his sleeves that will kill privacy on the internet and make the US Government “Big Brother”… If anyone wants to know about that horrible bill, it’s H1981 on OpenCongress… Fight as always.