milenapopova.eu will be offline for around 12 hours on January 18th, 2012. I am joining a global protest against the US SOPA and PIPA Acts aimed at limiting Internet freedom and civil liberties in order to protect the vested interests of a small number of corporations in the content industry.
It has been argued that this issue does not concern me – that this is single-issue politics in a foreign country. There are no geographical or political boundaries and nothing “single issue” about the Internet. The Acts target non-US sites specifically – sites like milenapopova.eu. They have global implications for private citizens and businesses alike. They propose to limit freedom of expression which can in turn affect any number of other political issues. Nor is the undue influence of the content industry on governments limited to the United States: this is also the week which saw EMI suing the government of the Republic of Ireland for failure to block pirate sites. The Great Firewall of America must not be allowed to be built. Nor must the content industry be allowed to threaten our rights and civil liberties, to undermine our democracies.
If you are in the US, use the information on this site to contact your representatives and let them know that sacrificing civil liberties on the altar of the content industry’s obsolete business models is not acceptable. If you are elsewhere, I strongly urge you to take an interest in digital rights issues if you don’t already. For the UK, the Open Rights Group is a good place to start. The Electronic Frontier Foundation has and international issues section. In Germany, the Chaos Computer Club is a good starting point, and in France I would point you to La Quadrature du Net.
Digital rights matter – to us all.