Minecraft creator Markus “Notch” Persson has announced via Twitter that Mojang will be showing its support against SOPA by taking down Minecraft.net and Mojang.com on 18 January.
SOPA (the Stop Online Piracy Act) aims to put an end to digital piracy by expanding the ability of US law enforcement and copyright holders to fight online trafficking in copyrighted intellectual property.
As originally proposed, the bill would allow the US Department of Justice as well as copyright holders to seek court orders against websites that enable illegal digital content sharing.
The proposed court orders would enable measures such as barring certain websites from online advertising, and disabling their access to payment services such as PayPal.
It would also bar search engines from linking to sites which facilitate piracy.
The bill would also make unauthorized streaming of copyright content a crime, punishable with up to 5 years of jail time.
Various online organisations have voiced their disapproval of the bill, including Reddit, AOL, eBay, Facebook, Foursqaure, Google, Kaspersky, Linkedin, Mozilla, Yahoo!, Wikipedia, 4 Chan and dozens more.
Notch SOPA protest 13 Jan
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