To paraphrase our last president, Hollywood hates your freedom. There, I said it. Hollywood is the Al Qaeda of content. It clings to an antediluvian notion of how media should be created and distributed. The SOPA and PIPA acts -- which Congress is continuing to consider, despite today's mass protest against them -- are its paternalistic, anti-Enlightenment attempt to suicide bomb the Internet's ability to disrupt its pre-modern, rapidly deteriorating business model.

[Please, take a moment to read Reddit's quick FAQ on SOPA / PIPA. Then consider calling your representative via this form and/or signing the petition.]

Maybe that sounds like crazy talk. But think about it: Hollywood would use SOPA to make it possible for anyone to single-handedly take down any site on the Internet, without the action of a court, just because anyone with access to that site (say, a commenter) used it to link to copyrighted content. What does Hollywood think? That if they win this level of power, the Internet will stop happening in the rest of the world?

That's why today two of the smartest, most successful guys in America -- Larry Page and Sergey Brin, co-founders of Google, blacked out the logo on the most iconic homepage on the Internet. But don't take their word for it -- dozens of other sites have followed suit.