Large websites like Facebook and Twitter are in agreement that the House of Representatives' Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Senate's Protect Intellectual Property Act (PIPA) could have damning effects on the future of the Internet, but they don't believe it's worth losing a day of revenue to participate in a blackout of their respective sites to protest the legislation.
Online encyclopedia Wikipedia and social news site Reddit are among the largest participants in today's scheduled blackout.
Users who go to Wikipedia and Reddit will only see information about the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Protect Intellectual Property Act (PIPA) proposals.
Alternatively, Google (Nasdaq: GOOG), also an outspoken critic of the legislation, today has information about the bill and placed a large black square across its logo in a simulation of censorship, but visitors can still use the search engine.
"Like many businesses, entrepreneurs and Web users, we oppose these bills because there are smart, targeted ways to shut down foreign rogue websites without asking American companies to censor the Internet," said a Google spokeswoman, adding that "we will be joining many other tech companies to highlight this issue on our US home page."
Despite not wanting to participate in the blackout other website operators, including AOL (NYSE: AOL), eBay, Facebook, Google, Twitter and Mozilla, have written to key legislators about their opposition to the proposals.
For more:
- Reuters has this article
Related articles:
White House opposes antipiracy legislation
There's no excuse for digital piracy, thanks to online services like Netflix
ISPs should take a graduated response to the piracy problem