We're Not Going Dark. We're Fighting: Stop SOPA/Protect IP

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Today many websites around the world are shutting down to protest the potential effects of the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and its Senate companion, Protect IP.At RedState, we are temporarily suspending publication of new content today to oppose SOPA and PROTECT IP.Both pieces of legislation are overly broad and give too much power to the Attorney General to shut down websites that may be innocent of piracy, but are accused of being engaged in online piracy. Both pieces of legislation are written by old men who need young staffers just to tweet and run their Facebook accounts. The sponsors probably have no idea how far reaching and damaging their legislation is.As Heritage Action for America notes:

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One of the main issues of SOPA and PIPA is that they force Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to block access to websites that have been accused of facilitating copyright infringement. Blocking access will likely slow down domain name resolution for the entire internet, while eroding the necessary trust the system needs. It would also set a dangerous precedent of allowing our government – and others – to filter domains. Fortunately, all sides have signaled this provision could be dropped.Further, the legislation would put a tremendous legal burden on websites accused of third-party copyright infringement and would cause them to be removed from search engines. Opponents have compared the legislation to China’s online censorship. Even if they made an honest mistake, they would be faced with litigation from the U.S. Attorney General. Fighting the accusations would cost so much time and money that smaller sites would likely go out of business fighting. Private lawsuits could also be brought against the websites. This would open up the potential for massive lawsuit abuse – even though the vast majority of online piracy occurs through a small number of websites.

Good friends of RedState like Marsha Blackburn in the House with SOPA and Marco Rubio in the Senate with PROTECT IP are on the wrong side of this issue. I personally, as much as I like them and so many of the other Republican sponsors, will make stopping both pieces of legislation a hill to die on and work to defeat them at their next election if this legislation passes.They should remove their names from sponsorship.And today, we are temporarily freezing new content on this site, standing with other sites on the internet in solidarity against both of these horrible pieces of legislation.To get involved, you can click here to call your Representative about SOPA.Click here to call your Senator about PROTECT IP.Stop both pieces of legislation before it is too late.

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