Mozilla to Join Tomorrow’s Virtual Protests of PIPA/SOPA

Starting at 8:00 am Eastern tomorrow, Mozilla will join with other sites in a virtual strike to protest the Protect IP Act (PIPA) and Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA). These bills protect content at all costs, creating the opportunity for abuse and damaging the Web for all of us.We will be blacking out the default start page in Firefox and redirecting key Mozilla websites to a special action page. Both steps are aimed at informing and mobilizing millions of our users on this important issue.
Mozilla’s Chairwoman Mitchell Baker has a blog post that further explains our concerns with the legislation , using a powerful analogy from the physical world to highlight how misdirected PIPA and SOPA are at this point.
These steps are complimentary to those participants in tomorrow’s online protest who are focusing on taking websites offline. We’re giving this degree of in-product visibility on PIPA/SOPA with the hope that this precedent-setting move will motivate people to ask their Congressional representatives to carefully consider all the facts and viewpoints before moving either of these bills forward.
This campaign will not effect people’s experience with Firefox, however, we hope it raises awareness and engagement. We’ll return people’s default start page and stop redirecting traffic at 8:00 pm Eastern tomorrow.

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ACTA (“Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement”) is a proposed new international law establishing international enforcement standards against counterfeit goods and pirated intellectual property items. ACTA was negotiated as a “trade agreement” which means that it was negotiated in private without open involvement of all the stakeholders. There has been no formal opportunity for input from people other than those who were lucky enough to be invited into the private discussions.
This is a bad way to build Internet policy. The Internet is a fundamental platform for communication and interaction. There are many stakeholders. The voices of human empowerment, human rights, and competing economic interests must be heard. These voices must have a place at the table when policy is debated. ACTA was not created through such a process.

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