This past Wednesday I attended the emergency NYTech meet up protesting the passing of SOPA and PIPA with my fellow interns at Campus Clipper. If you don't know what SOPA/PIPA is (which you should if you know how to visit blogs) you can check here -->  MORE ABOUT SOPA AND PIPA

 We arrive at the site location about half an hour early so we decided to wait around until the event was actually going to start. We managed to sneak into the front before the cops noticed and closed the gate behind us, but BAM right behind the cameras, closest areas to the speakers and a crowd of SOPA/PIPA protestors behind us.

The protest was exactly as it should have been. Clear. Concise. Controlled. Informative. And most importantly Inspirational. Many people know about SOPA and PIPA but not exactly how it affects everyone. One of the problems noted by the speakers was that the senators that support this bill do not understand the internet and therefore do not understand WHY this affects us as much as it does.

This bill will kill the internet. The last free resource we have. The last form of communication that allows us to change, develop, and create as we will.

While many people will look at this and all the other "STOP SOPA STOP PIPA" protests and go "Yeah, this bill is bad. Someone should stop it", you have to realize that this affects EVERYONE.

The people who go on Youtube to watch videos either for music, updates, cat videos, etc.
Business who are starting up through only a website and depend on it.
Wikipedia. We don't want this to happen...

This also hurts the new artists coming into the field as well. I know people who are just graduating or in graduate school who do comic, graphic novel, and illustration work. This field requires a lot of self-promotion to get your name out there. Many times as an artist you have to hit another fanbase, such as a television show or anime, so that you can gain fans through those fanbases and once they know and love your work you can produce and promote your original pieces. This process, which is important to these new artists, will be slaughtered with this bill.

All in all. What did I learned from going to this meeting? We think we have no voice as regular people, but in reality we do. We can sign this petition and make a difference. Our future, the future generation, depends on this bill NOT passing.

So...SIGN THE PETITION!! It isn't hard. Just Click below:
 ------>   CLICK HERE TO HELP STOP SOPA /PIPA <---------------------