Why am I doing this on a religious blog? The reason is that the SOPA and PIPA rules will allow anyone to get an American court order to take down a site for copyright violation, even if that violation is in a comment. This means they can remove any .com or .org or other non-national address and leave people in the rest of the world with no recourse unless they can afford to go to America and appeal the decision. They can also force search engines not to list sites and service based in the US like WordPress to remove them. Since contesting this wll cost money, it is quite likely that most actions will be unopposed.

In the past religious groups have used copyright law for monetary gain, to keep secrets, suppress splinter groups,  and most worryingly to avoid criticism and debate.  With SOPA in force if someone didn’t like a comment they could apply for the site removal. Very possibly the first a blogger would know about it is when the blog disappeared. Speak against SOPA and for freedom of expression.

Here are some suggestions for your first post.

1. You can find new ideas for what to blog about by reading the Daily Post.
2. Add PressThis to your browser. It creates a new blog post for you about any interesting  page you read on the web.
3. Make some changes to this page, and then hit preview on the right. You can always preview any post or edit it before you share it to the world.