Hella Bus Blog

Read more about SOPA and what a lowsy thing it is.

Thank you Will Canine for the Gif!

The House and Senate are currently considering legislation that would enact pretty drastic copyright protection measures under the names SOPA and PIPA.

And there was a chance you hadn't heard of them at all, until prominent sites such as Wikipedia, Reddit, Twitpic, and ...icanhazcheeseburger decided to bring the topic front and center with a day of protest.  Wikipedia is shuttering all English-language content today, and Google has placed a prominent link on their main page instructing users to lobby their elected officials.

Why? SOPA and PIPA attempt to go after people who offer pirated copyrighted material in order to protect the profits of movie and music producers.  Unfortunately for them, the most egregious pirates operate outside of the U.S. jurisdictions.

The very scary, very draconian Stop Online Piracy Act is looming menacingly in the hands of the Senate at the moment putting everybody from small media-advocacy organizations to Google and Facebook in panic mode. The internet is alight with petitions protesting SOPA, and now Google, Facebook, Amazon, and Twitter are even consider "the nuclear option," aka shutting down their services in protest.

Now Android users have a new tool to help them support companies that have publicly denounced the legislation. It's called Boycott SOPA - an app that can tell you on the spot a company's stance on the issue.  For example, Coke is apprently quite the SOPA fan, Smirnoff, however, say's no thanks. Check it out for yourself here!