First, let me say that I would never consider taking up FanPost space with this if we were in a busier time of the season. Second, while this post deals with a political subject, I personally see it as completely party neutral and want this to serve as a means to inform folks who may not understand how what is happening in Washington right now could seriously impact the future of Arrowhead Pride and every other blog across the internet. If you know what SOPA and PIPA are and have done your part to understand what they are and how they impact you, then by all means skip this post and move on to something else. Otherwise, follow after the jump.

SOPA (House) = "Stop Online Piracy Act" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stop_Online_Piracy_Act

PIPA (Senate) = "Protect Intellectual Property Act" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PROTECT_IP_Act

Rather than me trying to explain what's in these bills, I would ask you to click over and read them for yourself.

These are both works in progress and will certainly be changed before they would ever reach a final vote. My big problem is that anyone in Washington thinks these are actually a possible solution to online piracy. If passed in their current form, every single post and comment on Arrowhead Pride would have to be reviewed for copyright violations. Oh...you say that is no problem because you only use links to other web pages. Well, the Thorman's would also be required to make sure that any linked website is also not violating copyright laws.

And the burden of policing for copyright violations as proposed rests on the blog owner. If you can't police it, the proposed solution is to shut down the website until it comes back into compliance.

SOPA and PIPA are truly scary in that they are seen as a proper framework to arrive at a solution to online piracy. In reality, they would only serve to effectively kill blogs that allow common readers to voice their opinions. Blogs like Arrowhead Pride would be nothing more than posts by a very short list of approved people and absolutely no user comments discussing the issue.

So what do I think? I think every APer who is a U.S. citizen should take 2 minutes and let their Senators and Representative know that the current bills are unacceptable and you are watching their actions on their bill.

House contact link: https://writerep.house.gov/writerep/welcome.shtml

Senate contact link: http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm

To our non-US citizen family: I encourage you to contact your government representatives and let them know that the "crazies" in Washington are out of control (again) and maybe Canada needs to move its southern border further south.

Final editorial comment: While I was drafting up this post, Chris "front paged" the official SBN position on SOPA, so this post is a little redundant. Rather than delete my FanPost, I thought it might help to add to the discussion and provide easy links to contact your government officials.