If you haven’t noticed yet, the Wikipedia is blacked out, Google has blacked out its logo, and thousands of other sites are taking similar action to protest SOPA and PIPA. These bills in the House and Senate respectively threaten the open foundation of the Web, and the open dissemination of knowledge not just by the Wikipedia, but also by libraries and archives. The Research Works Act, subject of a previous blog post, would further damage the cause of open science and scholarship by making it much more difficult to promote open access to peer-review literature based on publicly financed research.
For open archaeology, Open Context has also joined in protesting these bills.
Update:
Sean Gillies, lead developer of Pleiades, has a beautifully rendered blackout page on his blog.
Update 2:
Jon Voss, a leading advocate for Linked Open Data for cultural heritage wrote a great discussion on why SOPA is so dangerous.
Update 3:
More anti-SOPA / anti-PIPA action from archaeologists here: http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2012/01/18/sopa-blogging-and-scholarship/