What are SOPA and PIPA

We had  heard  that websites like Wikipedia, Reddit, WordPress, TwitPic, and Fark are all protesting SOPA and PIPA by blacking out their site. SOPA refers to Stop Online Piracy Act and PIPA refers to Prevent IP Act.  These are the bills going through the U.S. House and Senate designed to prevent internet piracy, but they could also potentially change the internet as we now know it, not only potentially killing many sites, but also potentially weakening the underlying structure of the internet.
Here is  an open letter to Washington signed by many founders of major tech companies:

An Open Letter to Washington

We’ve all had the good fortune to found Internet companies and nonprofits in a regulatory climate that promotes entrepreneurship, innovation, the creation of content and free expression online.

However we’re worried that the PROTECT IP Act and the Stop Online Piracy Act — which started out as well-meaning efforts to control piracy online — will undermine that framework.

These two pieces of legislation threaten to:

Require web services, like the ones we helped found, to monitor what users link to, or upload. This would have a chilling effect on innovation;
Deny website owners the right to due process of law;
Give the U.S. Government the power to censor the web using techniques similar to those used by China, Malaysia and Iran; and
Undermine security online by changing the basic structure of the Internet.
We urge Congress to think hard before changing the regulation that underpins the Internet. Let’s not deny the next generation of entrepreneurs and founders the same opportunities that we all had.

Marc Andreessen, co-founder of Netscape and Andreessen Horowitz
Sergey Brin, co-founder of Google
Jack Dorsey, co-founder of Twitter and Square
Caterina Fake, co-founder of Flickr and Hunch
David Filo, co-founder of Yahoo!
Reid Hoffman, co-founder of LinkedIn
Arianna Huffington, co-founder of The Huffington Post
Chad Hurley, co-founder of YouTube
Brewster Kahle, founder of the Internet Archive and co-founder of Alexa Internet
Elon Musk, co-founder of PayPal
Craig Newmark, founder of craigslist
Pierre Omidyar, founder of eBay
Biz Stone, co-founder of Obvious and Twitter
Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia and the Wikimedia Foundation
Evan Williams, co-founder of Blogger and Twitter
Jerry Yang, co-founder of Yahoo!


The White House has come out against SOPA and PIPA, as have many leaders in the tech industry, venture capitalists, and even people who built the internet. But the bills could still pass. Are you against this? First  Learn which Members of Congress and the Senate are for and against SOPA and PIPA. Go here to get the contact information of your elected officials. E-mail them against this to stop it.

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