January 18th 2012 6:36 am
[ Leave A Comment | 4 people already have ]

You might have already heard that a bunch of websites are staging a blackout today - not in honor of my birthday, which would be awesome, but in protest of SOPA and PIPA which are UNawesome. SOPA is the Stop Online Piracy Act. The big "content-providers" claim they need this law to protect their rights from foreign websites that are illegally selling their property (i.e. pirated movies.) The problem is, instead of just going after the people selling the stuff illegally, they want to go after every website and its brother that is connected to the site selling the stuff. And it's not just selling either, it's any copyrighted material. So if someone posted a video that wasn't their own on YouTube, and then one of us linked to it on our Catster page, the "content-provider" that owned the copyrighted material could sue YouTube and Catster! Any website that allowed users to post content would be in danger of being sued. Talk about a threat to free speech!

As you all know, the internet is made of cats, so a threat against the internet is a threat against us! If you go to Cheezburger today, they have a video about what would happen if these laws pass and a link to more information.

http://icanhascheezburger.com/

Tell your humans to call or write their U.S. Congressmen and tell them to vote NO. (Senators about PIPA & Representatives about SOPA).