Reddit, one of the main leaders in the anti-SOPA blackout, has become the go-to place for one lawmaker. Representative Hank Johnson of Georgia has turned to the Reddit community for input on how to create mobile privacy legislation. He announced his AppRights.us initiative on Reddit yesterday, saying, “It’s an open, bottom-up approach to drafting legislation that will protect the privacy of mobile device users.” Hoping to engage the technology community after the SOPA/PIPA debacle, Johnson is inviting netizens to share their thoughts on the AppRights website and through discussion on Reddit. Read more

Six months after the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) was shelved, a new petition strongly advocating “a free and open Internet” is making the rounds online.

The Declaration of Internet Freedom was released Monday and is a reminder that those who opposed SOPA and its sister bill, the Protect IP Act (PIPA), have not forgotten about these laws and in fact, are more than willing to fight against them.

The petition’s preamble reads:

We believe that a free and open Internet can bring about a better world. To keep the Internet free and open, we call on communities, industries and countries to recognize these principles. We believe that they will help to bring about more creativity, more innovation and more open societies.

Spearheaded by FreePress.net, the petition is not only open to feedback, but is actively seeking it. The declaration is listed on platforms such as reddit, Techdirt, Cheezburger and Github, where you can “interact” with the text and make your opinions and alterations known. Read more

The next time you log onto Facebook to post your latest article, think twice about what you share. Instead of copying in the link, why not share an image from the story instead?

That method worked well for ProPublica. Its graphic of changing congressional support for SOPA and PIPA from Jan 18. to Jan. 19 went viral after being posted on ProPublica’s Facebook page Thursday night. In less than 48 hours, the image received more than 17,000 likes, was shared more than 10,100 times and received a whopping 1,298 comments. And those numbers are still rising.

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Senator Harry Reid has announced he will postpone the Senate vote on the PROTECT I.P. Act (PIPA), originally scheduled for Tuesday. Following the shutdown of thousands of websites earlier this week, Congressional support for the bi-partisan legislation has declined.

Google has collected more than 7 million signatures in an online petition to stop PIPA and its corresponding House bill, SOPA. Reid, however, is still hopeful that the bill can be revised to the satisfaction of critics. In a statement released earlier today, he said, “There is no reason that the legitimate issues raised by many about this bill cannot be resolved. Counterfeiting and piracy cost the American economy billions of dollars and thousands of jobs each year, with the movie industry alone supporting over 2.2 million jobs.” He also commended the work of Senator Patrick Leahy who introduced the bill, and said that he was “optimistic that we can reach a compromise in the coming weeks.” Read more

Some of the sites U.S. Internet users rely on most plan to take part in an online protest Wednesday, Jan. 17, against SOPA — the Stop Online Piracy Act — and related bill PIPA — PROTECT IP Act — currently under consideration.

We here at 10,000 Words have covered what the act is about before and why it would matter for journalists. But this net-wide protest by some of the Internet’s biggest names is big news, and will hopefully bring attention to the masses of people who will be affected by the restrictions it would impose but haven’t yet heard of it — those people who visit these sites but don’t follow Congress or Internet/media industry news.

Here are just some of the plans from big names (fyi, these links will probably be broken Wednesday):

• Wikipedia: Plans to black out its English site for 24 hours for the first time.
  
• Google: Doesn’t plan a blackout, but does plan to use its homepage to protest the law.
  
• Reddit: Plans to take down its site for 12 hours in protest and instead post information about the measure, including video of the house hearings/testimonies taking place.
  
• BoingBoing: Announced last week it will go dark for the day and has been sharing tips since on how you can join the crowd.
  
• WordPress.org: This blog host plans to take its main site dark in protest, and even posted instructions on how its users can take down their WordPress blog for a day as well, with links to the many SOPA-blackout plug-ins available.

  This is by no means an exhaustive list, but there are a few people keeping such lists, including All Things D. Politico, apparently, estimates as many as 7,000 sites will go dark. There’s also a pretty good list here of tech companies that have expressed opposition to the bill (not all are protesting, but it’s an interesting list to take into consideration).