Turn out the lights, the Internet has gone home for the day

Michael PhillipsTomorrow some big sites are going to go dark in protest of the proposed SOPA an PIPA legislation.

Wikipedia, Craigslist, reddit, Boing-Boing, Tucows, all 50+ of the goofy Cheezeburger Network sites, and many others. There are some very big names there, but hopefully some even bigger players will decide to make the move (I’m looking at you, Google) and force people to learn more about the twin threats of SOPA/PIPA.

I say “force people” because up until now this has been, for the most part, of interest only to people who are among the technologically obsessed. But while we may know what’s going on and are working to put a stop to it, the vast majority of people who do not live and breathe tech may have no idea what’s happening.

Taking down their favorite lolcat site is going to make them say, “Hey, what’s this?” so I applaud every one of the mainstream sites that have taken the difficult decision to participate.

Are we taking part in the blackout? Yes.

Our site will not be down completely (customers depend on certain aspects of the site to maintain their accounts and get support), but we will be switching over to a different look for the day in order to echo the “blackout” theme, show our opposition to SOPA/PIPA and provide some informational links.

We will also be blacking out as much of our Twitter and Google+ accounts as we can. There’s not much we can do at Facebook, but no one goes to that site anymore anyway, right? 😉

As important as it is for those of us already in the loop to continue to voice our opposition, it is equally important to try to get the less technologically obsessed among us to understand the depth of the threat we all face.

Read up on SOPA and PIPA so when your cousin or grandmother calls you tomorrow to ask where Wikipedia went, you’ll be able to get them up to speed.

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