== SOPA and PIPA matter for everyone

If you are visiting WanderingThoughts on January 18 2012 with
JavaScript turned on, you're being annoyed about the US's Stop
Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Protect IP Act (PIPA) bills. Unless
you've been living under a rock, you probably know something about
what these are. If not, see [[here http://americancensorship.org/]],
[[here http://blacklists.eff.org/]], [[here
http://sopablackout.org/learnmore/]], [[here http://sopastrike.com/]],
[[here https://www.google.com/landing/takeaction/]], [[here
http://www.craigslist.org/about/SOPA]], or, really, anywhere.  Try
[[Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:SOPA_initiative/Learn_more]].

It may seem quixotic to black out my little techblog corner
of the web over this, but, well, I feel like it. Yes, even
though I and this blog are in Canada; see Michael Geist's
[[Why Canadians Should Participate in the SOPA/PIPA Protest
http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/6244/125/]] (whenever you can
read it again, since he's going black over this as well).

(I will note in passing that any university puts a very large amount
of 'user generated' content on the web, especially in the form of
undergraduate, graduate, staff, and professorial home pages. It is
essentially impossible for the institution to guarantee that there
are no pockets of bad stuff across all associated web pages, where
bad stuff includes malware as well as links and content that someone,
somewhere, doesn't approve of.)

Normal service will resume on January 19th, or you can install NoScript
(or the equivalent for your browser) and enjoy it immediately.

PS: if you want to understand some of the problems with SOPA/PIPA
in real life, as things actually get used on today's Internet, see
Techdirt's [[Monster Cable claims Costco (and others) are 'rogue sites'
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20111005/10082416208/monster-cable-claims-ebay-craigslist-costco-sears-are-rogue-sites.shtml]].