NPI to participate in Internet strike against SOPA and PIPA on January 18th

Read­ers who are reg­u­lars at Red­dit or who close­ly fol­low tech­nol­o­gy news may have heard that the social news site is lead­ing the way in fer­ment­ing what’s being called an Inter­net strike against two destruc­tive, anti-Inter­net bills being pushed by Hol­ly­wood on Capi­tol Hill (the so-called “Stop Online Pira­cy Act” and the “Pro­tect IP Act”). The bills have been mov­ing towards the respec­tive floors of the U.S. Sen­ate and the U.S. House for months with lit­tle pub­lic debate.

Thanks to the efforts of an unusu­al­ly diverse and strong grass­roots coali­tion com­prised of pro­gres­sives, con­ser­v­a­tives, and lib­er­tar­i­ans, sup­port for these ill-con­ceived bills is final­ly on the wane.

But the fight is not over yet.

Last Tues­day, Red­dit’s admin­is­tra­tors threw down the gaunt­let and announced that on Wednes­day, Jan­u­ary 18th, they would be black­ing out the site — in oth­er words, going on strike — from 8 AM East­ern until 8 PM Eastern:

We’re as addict­ed to red­dit as the rest of you. Many of you stand with us against PIPA/SOPA, but we know sup­port for a black­out isn’t unan­i­mous. We’re not tak­ing this action light­ly. We wouldn’t do this if we didn’t believe this leg­is­la­tion and the forces behind it were a seri­ous threat to red­dit and the Inter­net as we know it. Black­ing out red­dit is a hard choice, but we feel focus­ing on a day of action is the best way we can ampli­fy the voice of the community.

As we have seen yet again in the fight against PIPA/SOPA, the best ideas come from our com­mu­ni­ty. We all have just over a week to fig­ure out exact­ly what to do with our extra cycles on Jan­u­ary 18th. Please join us in the dis­cus­sion in the com­ments here and in /r/SOPA.

Since Red­dit announced its deci­sion to go on strike, dozens of oth­er sites and orga­ni­za­tions have announced that they will join in the black­out. The list now includes Boing Boing, the Cheezburg­er net­work, Minecraft, Wikipedia, and hun­dreds of oth­er web­sites. Mozil­la, Tucows, the Free Soft­ware Foun­da­tion, Free Press, and many oth­er orga­ni­za­tions are also tak­ing part.

We at NPI have decid­ed to join in the strike. On Wednes­day, Jan­u­ary 18th, our nor­mal home page, The Advo­cate (this blog!), In Brief, and Pacif­ic NW Por­tal will be blacked out and replaced by an anti-SOPA/PI­PA action cen­ter. The action cen­ter will also be promi­nent­ly fea­tured on Per­ma­nent Defense and the Olympia Newsriver.

In addi­tion, we’ll be post­ing strike updates through­out the day on our Twit­ter and Face­book feeds, encour­ag­ing all NPI sup­port­ers and fol­low­ers to join us in express­ing our oppo­si­tion to these bills to Congress.

We are strong­ly opposed to SOPA and PIPA because either of these bills, if passed, would endan­ger Inter­net free­dom. And that’s some­thing that mat­ters to us more than just about any­thing else. Before NPI exist­ed phys­i­cal­ly or legal­ly, it exist­ed as an idea on the Web. Like oth­er net­roots orga­ni­za­tions and tech star­tups, NPI’s roots are vir­tu­al. If the Inter­net had­n’t been invent­ed, NPI would nev­er have come into being. The same goes for the rest of the net­roots community.

The Inter­net is the first mod­ern medi­um for com­mu­ni­ca­tion that is not con­trolled by gate­keep­ers who run Hol­ly­wood stu­dios, the­ater chains, broad­cast media empires, big box stores, record labels, and pub­lish­ing hous­es. That is because it is decen­tral­ized and open: there is no cen­tral author­i­ty dic­tat­ing who gets access. Com­pared to oth­er media, the bar­ri­ers for entry are low. Any­one who wants to set up a site of some kind, or par­tic­i­pate in a com­mu­ni­ty set up by some­one else, can do so with­out need­ing a ton of mon­ey or connections.

Media exec­u­tives have long viewed the exis­tence of the Inter­net as a threat to their pow­er. That’s why they have been try­ing to sneak leg­is­la­tion through Con­gress that would allow them to use the Depart­ment of Jus­tice as their own pri­vate law firm. They want the abil­i­ty to cen­sor the Inter­net as they see fit. And that means attain­ing the pow­er to dis­con­nect web­sites with­out due process.

We can­not let the MPAA, RIAA, and the media con­glom­er­ates they speak for win. We have to stop these bills. Noth­ing less than our First Amend­ment free­doms — free­dom of speech, free­dom of the press, free­dom of assem­bly, and free­dom to peti­tion — are at stake. We need to set a good exam­ple for the world to fol­low. That means keep­ing the Inter­net open and demo­c­ra­t­ic, as it was designed to be.

We invite you to join us in this day of protest by con­tact­ing your mem­bers of Con­gress and let­ting them know you are strong­ly opposed to both SOPA and PIPA.