Fellow denizens of the Internet, lend me your eyes~!! As you may or may not have heard, there is major Internet-related legislation that is currently being voted on in the US House of Representatives and the US Senate. The
Protect IP Act and
Stop Online Piracy Act are both ideas with good intentions (stopping online piracy), but they give companies the power to make Internet Service Providers censor large chunks of the Internet and allow law enforcement to confiscate servers that have 'pirated' material on them.
At this point, if you live outside the US, you should not stop reading, but you be researching these things to tell your US friends about them, and to know how they will affect you, because they will affect you too! If you live in the US, you should be researching this issue and then contacting your representatives. (They're supposed to be voting based off of your opinion, after all! That's why they're called your
representatives.)
More about SOPA and PIPA can be found
here,
here, and
here. The last link has a nice FAQ that can tell you what to expect if the bills pass.
Due to all this and how it would affect us personally as a site, HPRPG.NET is stepping off our normally non-political perch and taking part in the
SOPA Strike that starts at 8:00am on January 18th. Therefore,
you will not be able to access HPRPG from 8:00am EST on January 18th until 8:00pm EST on January 18th.
Please, please, please contact your representative (or the US State Department if you live outside the US!) during our downtime. Your continued access to our site means a lot to us, and it may go away if these bills pass into law.
So make a phone call, write an e-mail, or even go old school and write a letter that a Congressman will then have to make a staffer physically dispose of somehow---find out who you should contact here and contact them! The continued freedom of the Internet (and HPRPG.NET) depends on you!
Sincerely,
Your HPRPG.NET Admin and Head Students
