SOPA — my part in its downfall

If you haven’t heard, SOPA, which stands for Stop Online Piracy Act, is a US bill that was proposed in order to do what its name suggests. Although it has been defeated for now, its proponents have not given up, so many websites, notably including Wikipedia, are going on strike tomorrow (January 18th) in order to show just how potentially damaging the bill could be to the internet. I haven’t looked in much detail into what the adverse consequences of SOPA would be, but I’ve read enough, from people whose opinions I trust, to believe that I should join this strike. My technical competence is insufficient to follow the instructions that have been offered for doing this (and the same applies to any instructions that anyone reading this might feel moved to offer so I suggest not bothering). Therefore, I plan to mark this blog as private (and therefore inaccessible) for the day, an operation that I will undo on Thursday.

If you’d like more details about what’s wrong with the bill, then Google “SOPA” and you’ll find all you could possibly want.

Edit: I was about to change the blog to private when I noticed that WordPress has a Protest SOPA/PIPA setting. I’ve gone for that. It results in the ribbon you see in the top right-hand corner of this page, and a total blackout, with a page explaining why, from 8am to 8pm EST. So that will kick in properly at 1pm UK time.