Social Media Club is joining Wikipedia, Reddit and other influential tech firms in protesting the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Protect IP Act (PIPA) and our website will ‘go dark’ for 20 hours from Wednesday, January 18th at 12:00am EST to Wednesday, January 18th at 8pm EST as a way to show what might happen should these two bills pass in Congress.
We cannot control what other websites post, so it would mean Social Media Club would have to tighten our controls on who could publish content on our website as well as what was published and we would never link to another website (ever). This seems to tear apart the connectedness of our community we have been working so hard to develop over the last six years.
UPDATED: While President Obama has said he would veto SOPA as it is currently worded, the PIPA bill has been approved by the Senate Judiciary committee and a vote has been scheduled for January 24th. We hope that our community stands up and joins us in protesting the passage of this bill. Protecting copyrighted material and IP is important, but SOPA and PIPA are not the way.
To learn more about how you could be impacted by SOPA and PIPA, our friends over at CNET have put together a great FAQ and we encourage you to read it, then let your opinion be heard.
Again, our website will come back online at 8pm EST on Wednesday, January 18th. We appreciate your understanding as well as your support and apologize in advance for any inconvenience this may cause you.