Reddit Plans To Black Out Site For A Day To Protest SOPA/PIPA
from the go-reddit dept
In conjunction with next week's House Oversight Committee hearing on the technical impact of DNS blocking in bills like SOPA/PIPA, Reddit has taken the huge step of deciding to black out its entire site for a 12 hour period -- from 8am to 8pm ET. The guys behind the site admit that this is not a decision they take lightly, and that many in the community disagree with it -- but it's something they feel needs to be done:The freedom, innovation, and economic opportunity that the Internet enables is in jeopardy. Congress is considering legislation that will dramatically change your Internet experience and put an end to reddit and many other sites you use everyday. Internet experts, organizations, companies, entrepreneurs, legal experts, journalists, and individuals have repeatedly expressed how dangerous this bill is. If we do nothing, Congress will likely pass the Protect IP Act (in the Senate) or the Stop Online Piracy Act (in the House), and then the President will probably sign it into law. There are powerful forces trying to censor the Internet, and a few months ago many people thought this legislation would surely pass. However, there’s a new hope that we can defeat this dangerous legislation.This is the same Reddit that got over 2 billion pageviews last month. Taking down the site for an entire 12 hours is a huge, huge deal. But, according to Lamar Smith, they're nobody...
We’ve seen some amazing activism organized by redditors at /r/sopa and across the reddit community at large. You have made a difference in this fight; and as we near the next stage, and after much thought, talking with experts, and hearing the overwhelming voices from the reddit community, we have decided that we will be blacking out reddit on January 18th from 8am–8pm EST (1300–0100 UTC).
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Filed Under: black out, pipa, protect ip, sopa, support
Companies: reddit
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Coordination
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Re: Coordination
I'd do it, but I can't guarantee that I'd be available at 8am and 8pm and I don't know how to black out a blogger website.
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Don't just tell people about SOPA/PIPA, tell them that they're just the latest in an unending onslaught from a heavily corrupt congress.
Barely managing to make the DMCA reasonable wasn't enough, stopping COICA wasn't enough, and stopping SOPA/PIPA won't be enough. Weeds grow back until you take out the roots.
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"Instead of the normal glorious, user-curated chaos of reddit, we will be displaying a simple message about how the PIPA/SOPA legislation would shut down sites like reddit, link to resources to learn more, and suggest ways to take action."
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Re: Coordination
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After all we know that all news from everywhere belongs to AP even before it's polished up and stuck in a newscast or newspaper right? ;-)
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What is SOPA
or
How To Stop SOPA
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A lot of companies use them for their mail agent. That would hurt many small businesses.
People pay for advertising services, and expect those to be up. Turning them off would probably be a breach of contract.
There would be severe consequences if Google did this.
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While a noble idea, it would most likely also shut down Google itself. They would have deliberately shut down services that are important or even mission critical for small and large companies alike, violating every SLA they offer. Having made their point, they also lose the trust of every one of those companies, who would also have excellent grounds to sue as well as instantly cancel any account with them.
While I don't think that Google have "turned to the dark side" quite as much as some people seem to think, I also don't believe this issue is one they would deliberately immolate themselves over.
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In other news...
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Pleasantly Surprised
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Re: Pleasantly Surprised
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I've requested that Boing Boing, Wordpress and Slashdot follow suit
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A complete shutdown of Google would be an example of spiting your face because, depending on how Reddit does its shutdown that may send casual users skittering off to Google to find out why, for how long and so on.
Facebook won't shut down, that's practically a guarantee. I hope I'm wrong but there you are.
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The details are right here
http://www.techdirt.com/rtb.php?tid=100000000
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The Google et al audience is mostly unaware of these bills so alerting them can make a bigger difference.
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How useful?
I like that reddit is taking a stand, and I think they should still do it. I just don't think it will accomplish much. Tech news sites will report on it, but does anybody really think it will get a big headline on anything other than HuffPo or (maybe) Dailly Caller? Didn't think so.
If opponents really want to get noticed, then it needs to be, as others have suggested, a site that is known by everyone. Google, ebay, Yahoo, Amazon...any site like that. Even turning off a subset of their services would make an impact. Google could turn off Google+ or blogger. Amazon could turn off their MP3 sales section.
Those would be noticeable. I think reddit's blackout, as much as I hope it might not, will largely be ignored.
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Bottom Line
I say stooges only because I can't comprehend how a person could be so completely ignorant of the internet and its huge benefits as to suggest this type of legislative monstrosity. No one could be that completely moronic, so they must be bought and paid for by Big Content.
I hope that Google and Facebook also blackout, with links to their "representatives" - I cringe to use the word, since I think Congress stopped representing the people shortly before World War I.
Personally, I'd love to see links to Lamar's email, his phone number and any other information we can dig up on him. Let "nobody" contact him.
Not that a bought and paid for person would acknowledge them.
There should also be a petition. Have the sites normal visitors sign the petition electronically, then forward it to all members of the committee especially but also all presidental candidates (make it an election issue), the media and all members of Congress.
Let them know that "nobody" does indeed protest this abuse of power and threat to the Constitution.
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Re: Bottom Line
Our government is against ANYTHING socially beneficial. That's why the government grants taxi-cab monopolies, much of the food you eat is monopolized in one way or another (ie: by Monsanto through patents and other government established monopolies thanks to a legal system that allowed them to obtain patents and sue independent farms because their plants just so happen to have a particular gene), the hotel industry benefits from anti-competitive laws, heck, even some cities require permits to sell coffins in a way that effectively ensures that there is only one seller in the city. (I can go on, such as many cities being lobbied by incumbent restaurants like Pizza Hut in a ways designed to stifle competition in the restaurant industry). There exists government established broadcasting monopolies, cableco monopolies, mailbox delievery monopolies, laws that deter restaurants and other venues from hosting independent performers without paying a parasitic third party a licensing fee under the pretext that someone might infringe, to sell liquor or host a slot machine you need a license (which substantially reduces competition in a way that only helps incumbents).
When I visited Chili you actually have freedoms. I visited a house with a single slot machine in the back yard and neighbors and passer by's came into the back yard to play the slot machine. It was perfectly legal. Taxi cabs are ubiquitous, many people don't drive. The people who picked us up at the airport went to the airport in a taxi cab to pick us up and we went to their house in a taxi-cab, we took the 'freeway' and everything. People frequently go to work and back every day in taxi cabs, many of whom don't even drive, it's not unusual at all. It's affordable. Here, driving is practically mandatory. Taxi cab monopolies serve as a subsidy to the auto industry (and they help the taxi-cab monopolists of course).
So many things you buy here are covered by multiple, often redundant and obvious, patents, many of which have little to no regard for prior art. Copy protection lengths keep getting extended because a public domain is socially beneficial and would compete with monopolized content. Government funded R&D often ends up copy protected by private publishers for 95+ years and nothing ever enters the public domain anymore anyways do to constant extensions regardless. and the NIH is like the only entity that requires their government funded research to be made public after a year yet Congress is now trying to pass a bill to forbid the NIH from having such requirements. and much of the results of publicly funded R&D becomes patented anyways in such a way that only a few private entities can get licenses to use the technology or create a drug based on the R&D, which helps those businesses at the expense of everyone else.
This government is plutocratic to the core. Every aspect of this government is plutocratic. It takes away our rights and, unlike other governments (ie: that at least pretend to give its citizens something back, such as in the form of universal healthcare, which I'm not really in favor of) our government gives us little in return. Our government aims to make our lives as miserable as possible at every turn possible. You would be hard pressed to find an industry that doesn't suffer anti-competitive laws in one way or another, anti-competitive laws are everywhere.
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reddit should...
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Awareness needs to happen offline, not online.
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We can mention things like copy protection lengths and the fact that nothing enters the public domain anymore and compare that with other countries that celebrate new works in the public domain every year. We can discuss how it's difficult to get a hold of many older works because of copy protection lengths and how this leads to the erosion of our cultural heritage/history. Then we can move onto constant retroactive extensions after discussing how long copy protection lengths used to last. Then we can discuss how federally funded research gets locked up for long periods of time by publishers that contribute little, they don't pay researchers or writers or those who do peer review. Then we can move onto SOPA and its impact.
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"will Google go black on Jan 18"
over 153,000,000 results
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The politicians will strike back at them.
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http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20111212/16232517056/wikipedia-considers-blackout-to-protest- sopa.shtml
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_(proposals)#Coordinated_SOPA_reacti on_in_early_2012_RfC
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:SOPA
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http://littlebiggy.org/4709048
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