[Pardon the Interruption]

Don’t normally get all political here (unless it involves public financing of private sporting ventures), but today some* of you may have noticed the black bar over Google’s logo today. Or Wikipedia going ‘dark’.

That’s because today is an U.S.-wide initiative to oppose SOPA, the Stop Online Piracy Act, and its sister legislation, PIPA.  These are bills in the two chambers of the United States Congrees would allow our fine and fair government and the conglomerates that support them to censor whatever content they deemed ‘pirated’ by an extremely vague set of rules, without any due process. (Hmm, sort of like the Patriot Act…)

Anywho, I won’t go into the process as others can explain it better than I can. What I do know is that there is a potential for this site to be blocked for any stateside fan. Which would be awful news for everyone. So read more here:

https://www.google.com/landing/takeaction/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:SOPA_initiative

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:CongressLookup

http://theoatmeal.com/sopa

http://blog.reddit.com/2012/01/technical-examination-of-sopa-and.html

But, please, take a minute to learn about it and write a quick email to the Representative of (your extremely gerrymandered) district or the Senator of your (planned, to an extent) State.

Right, as you were…

*I’m not sure if you Brits can see this as I’m unsure what the international ramifications are for this bill, i.e., what will happen to a foreign-based website viewed in that native nation. Just what will happen when we, in the U.S., try to view a foreign website.