Folks,
Normally we all try to keep US politics off this board, which is a good thing. However, I'm going to bring up a current bill in Congress and ask you to do something about it ... because that bill threatens the existence of this board.
The bill is called the "Stop Online Piracy Act" (SOPA), athough it would be more accurate to call it the "Break the Internet Act".
Under SOPA, if any company decided that any post on this board was infringing on their copyrighted content (such as Certain Publishers in Boston), they would be able to shut down my domain name (cookaholics.org), effectively shutting down the board, and would not even need to consult a judge to do it. I would need to hire an attorney at my own expense to get the board turned back on ... and would not be entitled to any damages, even if the company acted frivolously.
SOPA grants corporations sweeping powers to "defend their property", without judicial or police oversight. Which means that any forum which criticizes a company -- such as this board -- would cease to exist. And right now it's set to steamroller through congress because the RIAA and MPAA have plowed $10m worth of campaign money into it.
So I'm asking you as a member of this board to phone your congressbeing at one of their offices, and leave a message asking them to oppose SOPA. You can look up your congressbeing's phone number here: http://www.contactingthecongress.org/ or here: http://www.house.gov/representatives/ . Phone is much better than email, since congress gets a lot of spam. Just leave a message with one of their staff, urging them to vote against SOPA. Then call your Senator(s) and ask them to oppose the Senate version of the bill, called Protect IP.
Read more about SOPA here:
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2011/11/s ... ot-yet-out
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stop_Online_Piracy_Act
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-20128 ... back-time/
Thank you, and now you can go back to cooking and jokes.
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No more politics, I promise. 