A day without lolcats: how Texas SOPA’d the internet

Today is the day. The day that websites across the internet have shutdown, gone black, to protest the House of Representatives’ Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA). Imagine a life without lolcats to soften your brain drain. No giggles from browsing the missed connections on Craigslist. SOPA also has an evil twin named PIPA. A Senate bill originally called the Protect IP Act. Plain and simple, the internet is practically the only part of the U.S. economy that still works. So why would we mess it up? And, when I say “we” I mean San Antonio, Texas. Lamar Smith (R-TX), the chief sponsor of the bill, is the U.S. Representative for Texas’s 21st congressional district here in San Antonio. There’s a lot of information out there to find out about SOPA. I’ve included a few resources below. But, more importantly why is SOPA bad for any of us? SOPA if passed would: greatly stifle creativity result in a substantial amount of job losses in the U.S threaten free speech SOPA was an initiative penned to combat online piracy. What’s been drafted wouldn’t put an end to piracy. Instead, it would harm online users and cripple the marketplace for entrepreneurs. Today the internet […]