STOP SOPA Let's face it, a lot of eLearners use Wikipedia as a resource when doing their coursework. And there's nothing wrong with that, it can be a great place to get a rough overview of a new subject, and its better researched articles have bibliographies that can be invaluable places to start when it comes to rounding up the relevant literature on a topic you have to address.

If you go over to the English language version of Wikipedia today, however, you'll find nothing to help you. That's because Wikipedia is on strike for the day, as are many other web sites across the Internet. They're blacked out to protest two pieces of similar legislation being considered by those in the U.S. Congress, one is called the "Stop Online Piracy Act" or SOPA, and the other is called the "Protect Intellectual Property Act" or PIPA.

Why are so many people who (unlike members of Congress) actually understand how the Internet works horrified by these bills? The arguments against SOPA and PIPA have been very well explained by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, an organization that has been fighting for civil liberties online since Internet freedom was first attacked by Congress in the mid 1990's by the so-called "Communications Decency Act". But to summarize, if passed, either of these bills would allow big media corporations and the Department of Justice to have unprecedented control over other people's web sites, without even the due process of law that comes from judicial review. In other words, some big company could simply write a letter to your Internet Service Provider and get your site taken off the Internet.

While I currently write all the content for eLearners News, it's not my property and I can't modify it to strike along with sites like Wikipedia. But I can speak out to explain that a world in which big corporations and government agencies have the immediate power to shut off web sites they don't like is a lot worse for eLearning than a world where people are free to express their views without fear of being censored.

So since you won't be able to browse Wikipedia all day (well, unless you read another language than English), take a moment and read up about SOPA and PIPA. Talk to the people you know who are techies, people who are well informed about Internet related issues. See whether any of them think that SOPA or PIPA is necessary or proper. And if they're as concerned as I, consider telling people. Even members of Congress. Most of them may not know the first thing about the real world, but if enough people from that real world give them a call, who knows, maybe they'll get the message that it's not okay for them to gnaw away at people's civil liberties just because they're told to by the corporations that fund them.