While the intent of the legislation is good, the
execution is terrible. It creates government censorship of the internet similar
to what we see in China, and puts sites like SailboatOwners.com directly
in its crosshairs.

For example, SailboatOwners.com (as well as Cruisers
Forum, Sailnet, Sailing Anarchy, or any other sailing forum) could be
effectively shut down without due process, and exposed to endless litigation,
because of material posted by our users. Search engines would be required
to delete us from search results.

In order to avoid this, forum
moderation may need to be increased to an absurd level that could become a
hardship for web sites and users alike.

AOL, Craigs List, eBay, Facebook,
Google, LinkedIn, Mozilla, reddit, Twitter, Yahoo, and Zynga oppose this
legislation and many sites, including Google, Craigs List, Wikipedia, reddit,
and dozens of others are either dark today or modifying their site in
protest.

As we all know, laws like this are difficult to overturn once
they're passed. Please let your representatives know that you're in favor of a
free internet.

For more information:

https://www.google.com/landing/takeaction/sopa-pipa/

Write
your legislators:

https://action.eff.org/o/9042/p/dia/…ction_KEY=8173

Sign
a petition:

https://www.google.com/landing/takeaction/

One last
favor: please allow me to keep this post here by refraining from comments with
political generalities. If you have a comment to make please make it specific to
SOPA. Thank you! This message was posted by the administrator of the sailboat owners forum. :
http://forums.sbo.sailboatowne…..hp?u=78260