Photo by: Jason Ippolito

Jake McGraw (@jakemcgraw), Software Engineer at DOTGO, is hoping to raise awareness of the Protect IP Act and Stop Online Piracy Act currently going through Congress.

Meetings in New York City and around the country have cropped up over the bill. You can find a complete list of meetings on the Americancensorship.org’s website.

“I hope that New York State Senators Kirsten Gillibrand and Charles Schumer will come out against this legislation,” McGraw said. “It will have a very negative impact on the Internet.”

Both Gillibrand and Schumer are cosponsors of the bill.

Oren Bennett is plans to participate in the January 18 meeting outside Gillibrand and Schumer’s offices said, “Let’s be blunt. I’m protesting; we all are (other tech people that are going).

McGraw is attending the meeting and said, “I think when a bunch of people who have taken time off their work day to come down it can’t be ignored.”

So far 145 362 people♠ are planning to join McGraw and Bennett according to the event’s Meetup.com page.

“These acts would allow the Attorney General, and even individuals, to create a blacklist to censor sites when no court has found that they have infringed copyright or any other law,” Electronic Frontier Foundation reports1.

That’s the thing. Many people who oppose the legislation aren’t against stopping online piracy – there are current copyright laws in place to protect copyright holders.

These bills may have larger impacts than copyright infringement. McGraw said at DOTGO it would affect user generated content.

“DOTGO makes it easy for individuals and companies to create SMS applications, if SOPA/PIPA becomes a reality, we would have to police our users to comply with takedown notices within a very short period of time” McGraw said.

Bennett would also have to change the way he does business. As a “budding capitalist and entrepreneur” he said, “I would have to find other creative ways to innovate with using the Internet. Freedoms can be taken away, but it has never stopped people from finding creative ways to still do what they want to do.”

Here is a list companies and organizations who support and oppose the Protect IP Act on OpenCongress.com.

The Senate will vote on the Protect IP Act on January 24th.

The video created by shows a visualization of what could happen to the Internet if Protect IP Act is passed:

♠ Updated number at 6:07 p.m.

  1. https://www.eff.org/issues/coica-internet-censorship-and-copyright-bill [↩]
  • sandy

    Thanks for the informative update. Great video that helped illustrate how this ambiguous bill will impact everyone that loves social media and/or entrepreneurship.

    • http://www.joegullo.net Anonymous

      Thanks, it appears both bills are on hold for now!