If you are a St. Louis homeschooler who uses the internet heavily for schooling, Wednesday might just be a good day to take a field trip to the St. Louis Science Center, The Butterfly House, The Magic House, or even spend the day at Planet Fun. Why? Many internet sites will be taking part in a 24-hour blackout in protest of SOPA and PIPA laws.
Many of the sites that will be blacking out tomorrow during the protest may not cause your schooling to come to a halt. However, if SOPA or PIPA laws are passed, it will have an impact on what information you can view online.
Homeschoolers tend to thrive on learning. This includes tapping into any and every resource at your fingertips. If you literally learn from what is available at your fingertips (through online sites such as Wikipedia), then you might want to consider taking Wednesday, January 18 off. Maybe even visit your library where you can freely research information about censorship.
SOPA stands for Stop Onine Piracy Act, and PIPA is a similar proposal which stands for Protect IP Act. What is this all about? In a nutshell, the entertainment industry wants tighter control over their intellectual properties and want laws in place to prevent illegal linking and downloads. While this may sound like a good idea, the proposed laws that surround it would most likely result in uncessary and overt censorship imposed by the government. The blackout protest on Wednesday is to demonstrate how the internet would look with this kind of censorship in place.
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