Fresh when it gets here from
Julie Barrett
Tuesday, January 17, 2012
Doubtless you've noticed the logo on a few pages has been covered up.
Why am I not going dark to protest SOPA/PIPA? Oh, several reasons, but first and foremost is technical. This site has been handcrafted since 2002. I've not used any sort of content management software. (And yes, we'll be celebrating ten years of the Journal in May!) In that respect it's not easy just to add a plugin. I've been moving toward using more CSS, but that's an ongoing process.
Will going dark do any good? I'm not sure. I do feel a need to speak up, though.
The current legislation before Congress is not only unworkable, but dangerous. When you link to another web site, should you have to vet every single link on that site to make sure they point to legal content? Should you have to pay the price if the content you liked to is legal, but elsewhere on the site is a link to illegal content, or some illegal content is hosted? No. Absolutely not.
Should a large corporation have the power to take your site down simply because they believe that something on your web site is infringing on their copyright or trademark? No. That's what a DMCA takedown is for. While I don't think the DMCA is a perfect process, it at least gives the recipient of the order the opportunity to prove their content is non-infringing, or at least remove the content without losing their entire web site. We're all human and we all make mistakes. If you post something by accident, should you lose your entire site? No.
As a content creator, I certainly want the ability to ask for infringing content to be removed. I don't think that taking down an entire site is an apt punishment, unless the entire site is pushing infringing content.
In this "corporations are people" era, we individuals cannot back down.
This is why I'm blocking the site logo on the most-visited pages, in lieu of wrestling with HTML code on every page on this site.
Please consider making your voice heard.