We're scheduling an anti-SOPA blackout for 1/18/12. Let Google & FB know.
reddit.com
reddit.com
They'd probably to announce it first, if it was a complete blackout; but if they didn't, someone going to the site would probably see just a blank page with information on the SOPA etc. Call me cynincal, but I'll bet 9 times out of 10 that the consequence would be the person either just clicking the Tweet/Like/+1 button (unless those sites have also blacked-out) and/or going to another site that provides the same service ("Google is down, so I'll use Bing" "Facebook is down, I'll use Twitter/Google+") That's not all though; other apps, companies, etc. that rely on Google or whoever would also have to shutdown temporarily (except if the parent site kept the APIs open, but then what's the point?) Is that fair to those companies, to those coders? You might say it's a short term loss, long term gain, but other people might not see it that way; e.g. "This site is down, so I'll use this other service until they are back up." I'm not talking about why they shouldn't but why they wouldn't if they don't.
More importantly though, how will this change anything? I'm not saying people or companies shouldn't protest, but I think the only thing the company that blacks-out their site will get will be a lot of angry customers and investors. More people will be aware of the SOPA, and maybe mainstream media will at least mention it, but talk doesn't change unless action follows. Perhaps I'm over-thinking this, but to me it just doesn't seem to be the most effective way of protesting.
This is one of the problems with a very decentralized anti-SOPA movement - there is no organization. I think that's why people are just hoping for a Google to take the lead.
I wonder what creative ways they could find to inform the public about SOPA in the next week or so? What's the best anti-SOPA argument any of you have seen?
Like "How many SOPAs does it take to screw in a light bulb? I would tell you, but google doesn't work anymore" :(
add: perhaps a black top bar for websites would work well as a JS, or a countdowned blackout script?
The reddit link as submitted doesn't have enough context to be sure what the proposer (user 'sub_par') means.
http://www.reddit.com/r/SOPA/comments/o8aty/petition_to_goog...
If this was in error, please follow these simple steps:
1) File a domain release request to your local Federal Court.
2) "
etc. By 'simple', make it look like it'll take a long time and a lot of legalese.
A good touch is an official-looking logo.
Oh the irony.
Extended: They are willing to take a day's loss and a loss of a politically neutral reputation for this brief event because such anti-Internet bills will harm the people and children. They believe it's wrong that the biggest support for the bills are from groups with a conflict of interest for death of sharing instead of adapting to newer technology that empowers people.
I'm sure that most of them care about internet freedom (after all, companies are composed of people who have their own freedom of expression); and if it didn't affect them whatsoever, I'm sure that many companies would take a stand against the SOPA and we'd be in the same position as we are now.
Of course, companies that have supported the bill have done so out of interest in having control of their 'material.' So we have two different points of view, one for and one against. However, both come from a need for control of content (some would call it greed, but that has negative connotations which I don't feel like addressing.)
My comment that you replied to has nothing to do with companies supporting or not supporting the SOPA, for freedom or not, but rather that some politicians (see the ones who support the SOPA) see things from an individual standpoint: i.e., they support business freedom except when it interferes with either their supporters (MPAA, RIAA, etc.) or what they 'believe' in. In other words, they want their cake and they want to eat it too.
The Declan McCullaugh 'nuclear option' prediction in CNET [1] only mentions the home pages simultaneously "turn[ing] black with anti-censorship warnings that ask users to contact politicians".
The Wikipedia (en) thread where a lot of this escalation-of-attention can be traced to included a mixture of both disablement-blackout (as I believe the Italian Wikipedia did for its domestic protest) and interstitial 'blackout' discussion.
The term is very broad without added context clarifying each use.
[1] http://news.cnet.com/8301-31921_3-57349540-281/sopa-opponent...
I'll be a little more involved once I hear Google/Yahoo/Microsoft/Wikipedia/Facebook start mentioning dates.
Anyone worried about the outcome of one day with Google being down aren't really thinking about what is at stake in the long run.
Somebody is going to see an opportunity to charge less than their competitors (or in this case, to stay online when their competitors are not).