PROTECT IP / SOPA Breaks The Internet from Fight for the Future on Vimeo.

SOPA, the Stop On-line Piracy Act (and its cuter-named counterpart in the Senate, PIPA) has just begun to garner major attention as people wake up to what this weird, ambiguous and overreaching bill would actually do to the workings of the Internet. The bottom line is that no one is quite sure, simply because it’s uncertain how corporations, entertainment conglomerates, and the government would use their new found powers to shut down sites, sue start-ups and individuals, and generally tinker with the inner workings of the web.

My bet, though, is “not judiciously.”

Whatever money Hollywood is losing because people are downloading “No Strings Attached” rather than paying to see it in the theater in no way justifies this enormous power grab that has the potential to have major consequences for sites we all use regularly. For a concise overview of the bill and the fears associated with it, watch the video above.

Tomorrow, Wikipedia and Reddit are spearheading a blackout, which I will be joining with this blog and its approximately 356,000,000 readers (and if I can’t figure out how to do this because I occasionally am an idiot with html, which I have both totally learned and yet am completely unable to master, I’ll push a post simply titled “Blackout”; always anticipate problems of your own stupidity getting in the way of your best-laid plans). If you’re any kind of webmaster, head to the SOPA blackout site here, to find out how you can join the blackout as well.

Even better, you can actually write to some of these jerkoffs in Congress, who I would bet have very little idea of what they’re voting for and are only aware that their votes are attracting an awful lot of campaign contributions in an election year.