Internet Blackout Coming To Show The EU Parliament It's Not Just 'Bots' Concerned About Article 13

from the this-is-a-big-problem dept

Last week Glyn mentioned that the German Wikipedia had announced plans to "go dark" this Thursday to protest Articles 11 and 13 of the EU Copyright Directive. And now it appears that a whole bunch of other websites will join in the protest (including us). While we won't go completely dark, we'll be putting up a banner in support of the many websites that do plan to go dark -- and we've heard that an awful lot of websites will be joining in. Supporters keep trying to dismiss these complaints as just being "bots" or the big internet companies, but lots of others will be showing that this is about the broader internet this Thursday. This is just one of many protests happening this week, with in-person protests happening all through the EU this coming weekend as well. Meanwhile there are lots of efforts to get MEPs to pledge to vote against Article 13 that has been gaining momentum as well. I have no idea if these kinds of protests will be as effective as the blackday back during the SOPA fight, but I can say that Article 13 will be way worse for the internet than SOPA ever would have been.

Filed Under: article 11, article 13, blackout, copyright, eu, eu copyright directive, internet blackout

FCC Votes To End Its Sports Blackout Rule

from the game-time dept

Blackout rules in sports: they're really stupid. Sure, perhaps there was some semblance of logic at one time behind the theory that if the stadium seats weren't filled, a team would pull a game off of television to encourage attendance, but the point is that in the age of massive television deals that are so much more important for a team or league's revenue compared with stadium sales, such that some teams try to fake their way into televising games, finding excuses to keep games off of the money-machine that is television is just plain silly.

What you may not know is that the leagues have had a federal partner in blacking out games for quite a while in the FCC. While the NFL is really the only league left that is bothering with blackout rules, they've now lost that partner as the FCC has unanimously voted to repeal its support for sports blackouts.

Today, the Federal Communications Commission voted 5-0 to repeal the sports blackout rule. Currently, the NFL will not allow broadcasters in a team’s home market to air games that have not sold out. This unfriendly practice is a matter of private contract between the league and the broadcasters, restricting what a sports fan can watch in the process. The FCC’s sports blackout rule prevented cable systems from carrying those games, as well. Although the repeal of the sports blackout rule is no guarantee that cable viewers will be able to see blacked-out games, now the NFL will have to arrange for blackouts solely through private contracting. The rule applies to any sports league, but only the NFL currently blacks-out games on local broadcast.

This, believe it or not, is an important step. Not because it represents any dramatic shift in televising games in and of itself, but because it's the beginning of the lift on blackout restrictions in general. Television blackouts due to attendance are the low-hanging fruit when it comes to blackouts in general, but if this starts building momentum such that the growing masses of cable-cutters can finally get local sports games with their internet packages somewhere down the road, it's a big deal. Because, as I've argued before, the only dam holding back an overflowing river of cable-cutters is professional and college sports. Take that away and the river runs wild.

This FCC vote, by the way, comes at the behest of a petition from Public Knowledge.

The vote follows a petition Public Knowledge filed with its allies that argued the FCC should end this archaic rule as an unnecessary intervention in the marketplace on behalf of the NFL, one of the most powerful sports leagues in the world. The following statement can be attributed to John Bergmayer, Senior Staff Attorney at Public Knowledge:

“We’re pleased that our petition, the voices of sports fans and TV viewers, and the evidence has persuaded the FCC to act on the public’s behalf. Private parties should not be able to use government regulations as an excuse to limit fans’ access to their local teams."

To be clear, local broadcasts can still be blacked out by the NFL, but that won't last much longer. Already there are rumblings from the NFL that indicate they realize that their product is far better consumed on television, and that fantasy football is pushing a larger consumption of multiple games throughout a day, rather than driving dedicated fans to a single stadium for the day. Good on the FCC for getting this right, even though they probably should have made this move a few decades ago.

Filed Under: blackout, blackout rules, fcc, sports
Companies: nfl

Proactive Blackout: Finnish Websites Go Dark To Promote Copyright Reform

from the the-best-defence dept

A little over a year ago we wrote about Finland's new Citizen's Initiative act, which requires parliament to process any bills proposed by the public if they get 50,000 signatures of support, and the Open Ministry website built to make the process easier. Then, earlier this year, we noted that one of the bills gaining steam on the platform was a call for new crowdsourced copyright laws.

Now, TorrentFreak is reporting that a bunch of Finnish websites went dark yesterday as part of a blackout intended to promote the citizen's initiative, which currently has a little over 27,000 signatures. The copyright proposal itself contains lots of sensible ideas:

The proposal addresses this concern by making small scale piracy a fine, at maximum, rather than its current maximum of two years in jail. By moving down the maximum penalty, the Finnish police would be more limited in their investigation methods - they won't be able to spy on citizens online, or confiscate property.

The remaining main points in the proposal include allowing fair use of copyrighted material for teaching and research, and adds fair use rights for parody and satire, which is unclear in the current legislation.

Artists' rights would also be strengthened, allowing artists to license their works through open licenses. Additionally, if a fan of an artist is being proscecuted, then the artist will have the ability to tell their representative organization to stop suing on behalf of their content.

Many decisions involving copyright in Finland are discussed and decided within a Copright Council, which includes representatives from the old media industries, such as the TV and recording industries. The proposal would also add internet operators, software, and gaming industries into that mix, as the scope of copyright expanding all the time.

Also, the proposal would clear up the language when it comes to personal video recording systems, which will assist startups, like BooxTV, working in this field, and perhaps allow for new innovations in this area.

It's fantastic to see the SOPA-style blackout tactic being employed proactively, to push for positive reform, rather than just as a defensive play against copyright maximalists. While a localized blackout is never going to have the impact of something as widespread as the SOPA protests given the global nature of the internet, here's hoping it gains enough traction to put these much-needed ideas about copyright in front of the Finnish parliament.

Filed Under: blackout, finland

Oreo Wins The Superbowl Ad Wars With A Timely Tweet

from the cost-less-than-$3.5-million dept

Yesterday was the day that, each year, proves that people do not in fact hate advertising. They actually like it quite a bit if the advertising is good. What they hate is crappy and annoying advertising. Of course, every Super Bowl, various brands duke it out to see who can get the most bang for their buck in Super Bowl advertisements -- which this year went for a cool $3.5 million for a basic spot. Still, many people are pointing out that the real winner of the Super Bowl advertising fight wasn't from one of the TV commercials at all, but rather Oreo's advertising agency, who sprung into immediate action when the power went out at the Super Bowl. Within just a few minutes (I think slightly less than 15), Oreo had put out the following tweet:

Power out? No problem. twitter.com/Oreo/status/29…

— Oreo Cookie (@Oreo) February 4, 2013

Just in case you can't see the embed, it says "Power out? No problem." And then had the following image with the caption "You can still dunk in the dark." A few other brands got out some clever tweets, such as Walgreens tweeting that it carries candles or Audi tweeting that it was sending some LEDs over to the Super Bowl. Twitter claims that four minutes after the lights went out an advertiser had already bid on "power outage" as a search term (you'd think "black out" might have been more effective). But Oreo actually got that graphic together, with the caption, and got it all up online quite quickly. I'm in awe, given that with big brands you normally expect there to be a bit too much red tape and "approvals" for anything like that. For Oreo, the key to having this work was that its ad agency folks and all of the key people from Oreo were in a room together, so the approvals went fast.

Tide also got a "blackout" graphic and joke online, three minutes after Oreo. It put up a weak image with a caption: "We can't get your blackout, But we can get your stains out." Kudos for trying, but definitely a step behind Oreo.

It's worth noting, by the way, that Oreo did, in fact, pay for a Super Bowl commercial as well, though it was showing up on lists of the worst Super Bowl commercials of the year. Whoever came up with the image and the tweet in record time may have saved the Super Bowl for Oreo.

Of course, all of this does raise a larger point about marketing and advertising these days. Doing a good job often has less to do with how much money you spend than with how good you are at actually connecting with people -- and a well-timed tweet and graphic can do wonders.

Filed Under: advertisements, blackout, fast reactions, social media, super bowl
Companies: audi, oreo, walgreens

Jon Stewart Blasts Viacom For Stupid Blackout; Viacom Sheepishly Turns Web Streams Back On

from the do-they-have-no-one-who-thinks-this-through? dept

Last week, we wrote about Viacom's really short-sighted decision to use its fans as hostages in a silly dispute with DirecTV over fees. To prevent any DirecTV customer from seeing any of its key shows, Viacom stopped streaming them online... for all customers, meaning that even those who had nothing to do with any of this couldn't legally watch the shows they liked. As we noted, this would likely only serve to drive more people to find unauthorized versions. Late in the week, we saw AMC smartly take the opposite approach and provide more online access to customers disrupted by a similar fight it was having with Dish Network.

Of course, one of Viacom's most popular shows -- and one of the key ones turned off from streaming -- is The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, which had been on break last week anyway. However, it returned last night with a vengeance, and target number one: his corporate masters at Viacom for acting as if they were China in blocking the internet, and likely driving more fans to unauthorized streams. You can watch it here (if you're in the US) complete with Viacom appending a commercial bitching about DirecTV beforehand: When we wrote about this last week, one of our usual critics told us, in some of the most angry language imaginable, how objectionable it was that we dared to mention the obvious fact that if you don't make things available legally, people might find unauthorized versions. However, Stewart made the exact same point in his discussion of the situation.

"You're pulling the shows from the internet?!? What are you, China?!? And by the way, you don't think the kids already have a workaround? This morning, when I woke up, my 8-year-old son was watching Dark Knight Rises in 3D. They're already figuring it out. So basically you're blocking old people from watching the show, and just giving people a chance to discover that there's other entertaining s**t in the world...."

In response, Viacom has somewhat sheepishly backed down and put the Daily Show & Colbert back online (though it seems some others may be blocked). It tried to make a joke of this a bit by pointing to Stewart's mocking and noting that "The Daily Show continues to exercise the creative and editorial freedom that makes it consistently great." In other words, someone at Viacom realized they totally screwed up and even their own high profile employees were calling them on it publicly. It really makes you wonder if they have anyone at Viacom who thinks how the world will react to its crazy moves.

Filed Under: blackout, dispute, fans as hostages, jon stewart, the daily show
Companies: directv, viacom

Russia Plans Internet Censorship Bill (For The Children!); Russian Wikipedia Blacks Out In Protest

from the stop-censorship dept

Over in Russia, they're preparing some new internet legislation that would censor the internet using the typical bogeymen. The claim from supporters is that the law is to block access to information on drugs, suicide and child porn -- all to protect the children. The way it works is with a giant blacklist, that I'm sure won't be abused at all (yes, that's sarcasm). We're talking about a country that has abused copyright law to go after critics and which has a bit of a... er... reputation for government officials abusing power to get what they want. In fact, some are already pointing out that the wording in the bill is really vague, such that it can be used to block any site dubbed as an "extremist" site.

And it's not just the human-reviewed blacklist that's at issue. The bill will also require "a special automatic system that will block websites containing 'prohibited' information.'" Because I'm sure that'll work even better...

We've noted other Russian legislation in the past, but this bill seems to go a hell of a lot further in creating a massive censorship tool for the Russian government.

The Russian Wikipedia is blacking out its site in protest, reminding many of the SOPA blackouts of Wikipedia in the US, though it's also worth noting that the Italian Wikipedia did a similar blackout even before the big SOPA blackout. It's good to see people speaking out and realizing that they don't have to just accept it when a government sweeps away their rights online. Who knows if this will have much of an impact, but getting more attention on the issue is a good start.

Filed Under: blackout, censorship, protest, russia
Companies: wikipedia

Historic Archive Of Websites From The January 18th SOPA Blackout

from the the-archive-team-strikes-again dept

We've discussed in the past the importance of preserving our digital history, including the excellent work the famed Archive Team has done rescuing and archiving various sites as they're being shut down. Of course, sites that are shutting down are not all that's worth preserving. There are also timely events that have value as well. For example, the amazing and powerful SOPA blackouts and online protests from January 18th. That was an historic moment, but it was just one day. Plenty of sites, including ours, showed some of the more interesting sites from the blackout, but there were so may that participated. Could you save them all?

It appears that the Archive Team did exactly that, archiving every site they could find that took part in the protests. The team has now released the entire archive as a 13.6 GB zipped download (don't click that unless you want to start downloading the whole thing). If you'd just like to see a listing of what's included in the file, you can see that too (though, that's also a pretty long list, so beware).

Kudos, once again, to the Archive Team for preserving important digital moments in history and making them widely available.

Filed Under: archive team, blackout, sopa

Jimmy Wales Says Chris Dodd Should Be Fired

from the you-want-abuse-of-power? dept

Chris Dodd and the MPAA have been pretty harsh on folks who protested online last week, arguing that the protesters were "corporate pawns" and that the blackouts were an "abuse of power." It appears that Wikipedia's Jimmy Wales feels otherwise. In a conference appearance he responded to the "abuse of power" claims by suggesting that the real abuse of power was Dodd threatening politicians who accept Hollywood money:

Wales argued that these transparent statements make the MPAA out to be a corrupt, Congress-buying organization. He also challenged Dodd’s assertion that Wikipedia’s decision to blackout its site in protest of SOPA, an effort Wales said was a “massive success,” constituted an abuse of power.

10 million people contacted Congress, Wales said. “That’s not an abuse of power, that’s democracy,” he said. “[Dodd] had best get used to it.”

Well, of course, to Dodd, actual democracy is an abuse of power. He prefers backroom dealing to actually letting the people out to have their say...

Filed Under: blackout, chris dodd, jimmy wales, wikipedia
Companies: mpaa, wikipedia

A Gallery Of The SOPA Blackout Protest Screens.

from the mr-smith-takes-over-the-internet dept

Needless to say, there's a pretty big protest going on right now against SOPA, with many sites either shuttering fully or making obvious changes in support of the protests. Leading the charge are Wikipedia, Reddit and Google. Sites like SOPA STRIKE and SOPA Blackout disseminated code to allow sites to easily join the blackout, but many sites have actually decided to take the time to tailor their protests for their own sites, which is amazing to see. It is this creative energy that drives the Internet and makes it what it is (for better or worse), and it is this very energy that legislation like SOPA and PIPA threaten to extinguish.

I've created a gallery of SOPA blackout screencaps, but here are some of my favorite takes on the protest today:

Reddit's blackout is probably the most complete; all URLs, including deep links, on Reddit lead to the blackout page, which is very impressive for such a largely trafficked site. For Redditor's going through Reddit-withdrawal today, they feature a handy countdown timer on their blackout page.


Wikipedia's blackout encompasses all of the English site, and as evidenced by @herpderpedia (who is collecting various angry Tweets about the Wikipedia blackout), it is certainly causing some frustration (and hopefully some awareness). That said, Wikipedia's blackout is very, very, very easy to thwart (just hit the ESC key before the page fully loads), so there's an easy escape valve for those that are in dire need of its content. In that same vein, Craigslist's full blackout also has a release valve that gracefully loads after a few seconds.

Google promised that it would do "something," and followed suit with a Google Doodle, essentially blacking out its logo in protest. Several sites followed suit, including Hacker News, 4chan's /b/ (link to a SFW screenshot), and TwitPic.

Taking the "censor-style" protest to the next level are Wired's blackout and Daily Kos' blackout. Wired's coders decided to mark up the page itself with black censor boxes, so that the page looks like it's been through the hands of some very aggressive government censors. Very clever from the design-minded folks over at Wired.


Elegant as always, xkcd's blackout offers the simple message, "[don't censor the web]".

And, the most amusing blackout of the day comes from McSweeney's (of course), who has handily replaced its site today with "A DAY’S WORTH OF FACTS TO GET YOU THROUGH WIKIPEDIA’S 24-HOUR BLACKOUT."


Check out the full gallery here, and let me know if there are any awesome blackout implementations that I've missed.

Filed Under: blackout, censorship, copyright, google, pipa, protect ip, reddit, sopa, wikipedia, wired

Anti-SOPA/PIPA Protest Songs

from the sing-it dept

Well, well. It looks like the ongoing protests are inspiring some extra creativity from some musicians. A bunch of people have been sending around The Day The LOLcats Died, an obviously play on a song you all know: If you're a bit more into hip hop than rock and roll, there's this song, by Okwerdz, called: The American Government wants to CENSOR the Internet: If there are any others, feel free to leave some comments...

Filed Under: blackout, pipa, protect ip, protests, songs, sopa