Today is “Internet Blackout Day” (Jan 18, 2012: http://wordpress.org/news/2012/01/internet-blackout/).

For anyone not yet familiar with the SOPA / PIPA legislation currently being promoted by lobbyists to implement Internet censorship in the U.S. (in order to protect certain vested interests in the U.S. — similar to schemes used to protect certain vested interests in certain other countries, resulting in suppression of free speech and economic development), here is a short reading list explaining why you should be contacting your Congressional representatives to oppose it in totality:

• Steve Blank, Stanford / Berkeley / Columbia MBA programs, 1/4/2012, Why the Movie Industry Can’t Innovate and the Result is SOPA
• Trevor Timm, 1/6/2012, Electronic Frontier Foundation, The Truth about the Economics Behind the Blacklist Bills
• Joshua Kopstein, Motherboard, 12/16/2011, Dear Congress, It’s No Longer OK To Not Know How The Internet Works
• Todd Mitchell, SoftLayer, 1/12/2012, How the Internet Works (and How SOPA would break it)

For broader insights into the problems generated by lobbyist politics and vested interests, see many of the writings by Lawrence Lessig, Harvard Law School, who more recently was focused specifically on election reform initiatives.