On Month 11, Day 16 in the United States, technology companies protested the proposed “Stop Online Piracy Act” as it would allow taking down non-infringing sites, would require prior restraint and remove the safe harbor protections of the Digital Millenium Copyright Act. See the letter signed by Google, Yahoo!, AOL, Mozilla, LinkedIn, Facebook and others.

I am careful in my Comic to give credit where it is due. But if the proposed law were to pass, anyone who alleged that I had used their material — say, a fragment of song lyrics — could immediately shut down not just my blog, but the entire site of my hosting provider. Under those conditions, who would want to provide hosting for blogs, or for any material that didn’t come from their lawyers?

Since anyone can accuse anyone — for example, anyone can accuse you — of anything, we oughtn’t to pass laws that provide no recourse for the accused.

The black bar links to AmericanCensorship.org which organized a national action day-before-yesterday in the States. This post is late for that, because I really do not understand time zones. You can read about more ongoing efforts at protectinnovation.com.