The passing of the Stop Online Piracy Act, or SOPA, could very well scrub the Internet clean of any content that the US government considers questionable.
The massively popularly website Reddit is well aware of these implications and is ready to show the world just what harm SOPA could do to the Internet.
On January 18, Reddit, a user-generated aggregator of content contributed by all corners of the Internet, will black out their own site in protest of SOPA. For an online hub that snags up around 2 billion hits every month, a lot of traffic and ad revenue stands to be lost during the 12-hour span. For the administrators of the site, though, they are running short on finding ways to fight the legislation.
Advocates against SOPA have rallied in Washington and across the country and Internet since a congressional committee began drafting the Act. Under the legislation, websites and people that post or share third-party content could be crushed with heavy fines and imprisoned for the distribution of knowledge. While opposition has existed ever since the terrifying realities of SOPA made its way to the Web, the ban by way of Reddit stands to be the biggest and only protest of its kind so far.
