On Wednesday January 18, 2012, hundreds of sites around the country will go dark in support of the Stop SOPA movement. We’ll be one of them.

The blackout is a protest against proposed legislation in the United States – the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in the U.S. House of Representatives, and the PROTECT IP Act (PIPA) in the U.S. Senate – that, if passed, would seriously damage the free and open Internet.

If you’re not familiar with SOPA, you should be, and can read an explanation on Wikipedia.  Although by the time I post this, most likely Wikipedia will be dark in protest.  CNN also did a basic write up of SOPA – What it is and why it matters.

While we support the bill’s stated goals and don’t condone piracy, we can not support the bill as currently drafted because of the potential implications for internet censorship and how it could impact what we’ve all come to value so much — open online dialogue. A point of view we shared in a newscast on Monday. We believe the bill’s backers lack a clear understanding of the Internet’s architecture, and don’t fully grasp the negative implications of the bill they’re considering.

SOPA is the wrong solution.