SOPA/PIPA Blog Blackout

Alistair Young

Jan 17, 2012 — 1 min read

While WordPress.com have made it possible for us to participate in this event, tomorrow (the 18th), I regret to say that I won’t be joining those of y’all who choose to participate. For two reasons:

One, as a rule, I abhor gesture politics, and especially the kind of gesture politics that relies on annoying the crap out of innocent third parties as a means to get its point across. This is just a personal quirk of mine, and one which I don’t intend to argue here.

Two, I have made promises to my readers of two daily items, the Fic-a-Day and Trope-a-Day on this blog, upon each and every day in 2012 in the first case, and until I run out in the second case. And it is not for me to unilaterally void those promissory statements.

Having said this, however, let me also take a moment to say that while I will not be participating in this particular spectacle, and while I am fully in support of intellectual property (after all, I produce intellectual property), I nevertheless firmly believe that both SOPA and PIPA are atrociously bad proposals legally, ethically, morally, technically, and grammatically, and everyone involved with lobbying for, promoting, writing, arguing, or otherwise with either of them should be taken and hanged by the funes until they’ve jolly well had enough.

That is all.

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