I don't typically send mass emails, but this is something I think is worthwhile.
If you go to Google or Wikipedia (among others) today, you will see links or entire pages about the SOPA and PIPA bills currently in the US House and Senate.
These bills are designed to combat piracy. I write software for a living and make some money from my photography as well. I understand the need to prevent piracy that can take money away from copyright holders. However this legislation, while well intended, goes about it in the wrong way.
In short, it allows copyright holders to request a site be taken down without due process. This is basically censorship and is bad enough, but the way the bills are currently written, it would also take down sites pointing to the infringing site. Because of the way the internet works with user supplied content, search engines, etc., this would cause huge problems for many sites, including Wikipedia and Google.
Google has a great PDF explaining those that are opposed to the bills, takeaction.pdf . The list includes LinkedIn, Google, eBay, AOL, Wikipedia, Facebook, and Firefox.
A bypartisan group of congresspeople have opposed the bill. The group include from the house CA Republican and former Directed Electronics CEO Darrell Issa, Dem. Rep. Zoe Lofgren who represents Silicon Valley, Tea Party Republican Jason Chaffetz, and Texas Dem. Sheila Jackson Lee. I watched some of the bill markup late last year, and I tried to figure out what the dividing line was between supporters and people in opposition to the bill. Those against included men, women, democrats, republicans (tea party and non), different races, different parts of the country, etc.
The only shared trait was that they were all more knowledgeable about technology.
Those that were in support of the bill made many remarks about how they were "not nerds," or didn't understand the details of how this was going to work.
In light of this I strongly urge you to contact your Representative and Senator. If you go to http://sopatrack.com/ you can put in your zip code and get direct links to the contact forms for all of the congresspeople that represent you.
At the very least please go to https://www.google.com/landing/takeaction/ and fill in the 4 blanks to sign the petition.
Among my strongest personal beliefs is that free and open education and sharing of information is key to pushing forward humanity. I think that already the internet has helped the world make major leaps towards improving the tensions between countries that have led to wars in the past, harboring communication between people with good ideas which leads to innovation, and lowering the threshold for less fortunate people to education or even starting their own businesses, worldwide.
If you want to read more, take a look at: