This is a wargaming website run by a pair of Canadians. It’s hosted on a Canadian server (a very deliberate decision, I should point out). So why is this post about American politics?

Because SOPA (the Stop Online Piracy Act) and it’s evil twin PIPA (the Protect IP Act) currently being debated by American legislators are so mind-bogglingly stupid, badly thought out and vile, frankly.

And because, especially under our current Conservative government up here, Canada has a bad habit of following our giant southern neighbour happily over whatever stupid policy cliff it’s just launched itself. SOPA/PIPA is a really, really big cliff. One that could wind up with the wreckage of much of the Internet as we know it splattered at the base of it.

Michael Giest has a great article on Why Canadians Should Participate in the SOPA/PIPA Protest. Read it before he blacks out his site.

I also know from the site stats we keep here that significant number of our visitors are American. Unlike those of us from overseas, who just have to watch in horrified astonishment and make what protests we can, our American visitors have Senate and Congressional Representatives they can, and should, be contacting to hammer home just what bad laws SOPA/PIPA are.

Wikipedia is going black. So are WordPress.org, BoingBoing, Reddit and a host of tech and geeky sites. Closer to wargaming, TGN and parent site CMON are going black.

We”ll be blacking out Warbard in solidarity from 0800-2000 PST Wednesday the 18th.

We’ll be back that evening, and so will all those much, much larger sites I mentioned above. But if SOPA/PIPA are rammed through, huge swathes of the Internet as we presently know it could wind up black for good, wrecked by bad laws passed by idiots.