Try going into Wikipedia or Reddit and you will find that both sites have chosen to go black today in protest of SOPA and PIPA. While the internet is buzzing with talk about what this would mean for the internet, there is a surprisingly large percentage of the population that have no clue what it is nor have they even heard the term before. SOPA and PIPA would change the internet as we know it. Nevermind the long-term effects which we might not even see coming for another few years. The language used in SOPA, widely open to interpretation, is just waiting for the legal system to create new precedents.
Mark Zuckerberg has openly opposed SOPA in a post on Facebook, but many question what good it does when Facebook is still operating on a day when many have decided to go dark. What can the rest of us do (if we live in the U.S.)? Call, write or email your senator/congressman. Those of us north of the border should at least sign the Google petition.
I’ll leave you with a snapshot of homepages that have chosen to go dark – Wikipedia, Wired, Google, Reddit, Craigslist (!!) and Buzzfeed:
