In protest of the SOPA Bill currently before the U.S. Congress, RolePlayGateway will be completely unavailable on Wednesday, January 18th, 2012 from the hours of 8AM to 8PM EST (Eastern Standard Time, GMT -5). We are participating in the anti-SOPA Blackout alongside companies like Reddit, Wikipedia, Mozilla, and many others to protest the potential damage caused by maligned legislation such as SOPA and PIPA.

What is SOPA?
SOPA stands for the Stop Online Piracy Act, a bill currently before the U.S. Congress. It includes clauses that, if passed, would potentially allow for any corporation to submit a claim against any other corporation, requiring the government to seize control over that company's web presence and taking it offline entirely. Other notable iterations of this kind of legislature include the Protect IP Act (PIPA), which must also be met with the same caliber of resistance.

Why?
If SOPA (or PIPA) passes, not only will RolePlayGateway be directly in the line of fire of wayward and disillusioned copyright enforcers, but the Internet as we know it could potentially be destroyed. Entire websites will be forcefully erased from the Internet because one user on that site decided to upload protected content, be artwork you've drawn of a copyrighted character or the use of a name or setting from your favorite canon. The legislation does not differentiate between sanctioned and unsanctioned copyright violations, and so even if only a small portion of the userbase of a site is generally responsible, it may still be eligible for shutdown.

SOPA affects users of the Internet around the world, and not just RolePlayGateway users in the United States. A single petition to the government by any individual could be used to eliminate all access to that site globally, depending on where that site is physically hosted, or even fracture the Internet we know and love today into a fragmented conglomeration of "internets" based on what country you might be in at a given time. Both myself, the Administrators, and many others here at RolePlayGateway find this violation of free speech, human rights and due process to be wholly unacceptable.

Because of the potentially-catastrophic consequences to communities like ours, RolePlayGateway has made the decision to participate in the blackout, and we encourage our members in the U.S. to get in touch with their congressional representatives and encourage them to vote against SOPA, while international members are encouraged to help spread the word and fight against similar legislation in their own countries.

This is a very good choice, glad to see that you understand the damage SOPA would do Remaeus!

It is going to catch a lot of us off guard; in the mean time how will we chat with others on the chat network ? I have a network I am part of and welcome all to my channel if it helps

I recommend using either Icechat or Pidgin, settings for IRC are made in Pidgin during account setup; once on there the network is irc.ircstorm.net the port is 6667, the channel name is #RPG_Chat, everyone is welcome to attend this channel when the site does the blackout for 12 hours.

Though I must admit, it will indeed catch a lot of people off guard and possibly anger others, the piece above I posted to get to my channel is for all to access the chat when not able to do so here.

I hate the idea of American Congressmen being so danged stupid

the two bills have been shelved indefinitely, looks like the blackout threat worked! With some help from the White House as well.

Yeah, well, we still have to make good on this threat. Remæus is nothing if not completely sincere.

I'm one hundred percent behind you, Eric.

For once, he did something right. Don't worry, fellas, there is hope.