Google will be joining thousands of companies tomorrow in protest over the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA). The Company will not be going black as Wikipedia, Mozilla, Reddit and WordPress will but they will be joining the protest movement. Google came up short when asked if they planned on going Dark, they issued the following statement to the Huffington Post,
“Like many businesses, entrepreneurs and web users, we oppose these bills because there are smart, targeted ways to shut down foreign rogue websites without asking American companies to censor the Internet. So tomorrow we will be joining many other tech companies to highlight this issue on our U.S. home page.”
The SOPA bill contains many provisions that activists and internet companies say will take away privacy rights in the name of fighting copyright infringement. The Act allows websites accused of piracy to be shut down with no recourse.
In addition to an online presence, activists plan on taking to the streets. NY Tech Meetup, an interest group that represents all aspects of the High Tech industry plans on bringing more than 1500 protesters to the Manhattan offices of Senators Charles Schumer and Kristin Gillibrand both of New York. Both are on record supporting the bill.
NY Tech Meetup Chairman Andrew Rasiej told the Huffington Post ,
“We’re gonna have people get on a soapbox with a bullhorn. We’re not in a theater; we’re in the street protesting.”
The Obama Administration is on the record in opposition to the legislation. The question will b e is if he plans to veto the measure if it passes?
