Forbes: If Facebook Can't Stop SOPA, We Can Do It For Them | Hacker News Reader

Forbes: If Facebook Can't Stop SOPA, We Can Do It For Them

forbes.com

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More annoying (but more visible) idea:

Everyone changes their name to "SOPA Enforcement Officer #204295" with an official looking picture, and combs through their friends posts all day looking for pictures or text that would potentially be taken down under a nightmare SOPA regime.

T-shirts or products with logos visible, artwork visible, song lyrics, videos with uncleared background music. Get creative.

Then, post fake takedown notices (in the comments) with an informational link.

> T-shirts or products with logos visible, artwork visible, song lyrics, videos with uncleared background music. Get creative.

Seems like something that could be automated, if only there was a big database of copyrighted works. (Maybe transloading videos to YouTube and watching for the "copyrighted works detected" flag to pop up?)

ahem... won't we be doing media lobby's work for them :)..

> ... if only there was a big database of copyrighted works.

Essentially all works are copyrighted under U.S. law, except those made by the U.S. Government, those whose copyright has expired (OLD stuff), other-media representations of a public domain work (e.g., a photograph of the Mona Lisa), and those explicitly placed into the public domain by the author.

it's more powerful from an emotional standpoint if people do it manually

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slacktivism

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armchair_warrior

I see what you're saying, but in this case slacktivism may be the best thing to do. The issue, from what I've understood, is that not enough people know about SOPA. And where do you best spread information? Yes, on the Internet.

People have tried -not- slacktivism, which is calling representatives. There's not enough of them. Try some slacktivism first to get peoples attention, then go for the big things.

Back in my facebook days, there were a lot of these 'awareness campaigns' on my wall, people changed profile pictures, posted some wierd messages, etc. After a gazillion of them, I just stopped caring and didn't even ask what another kind of ribbon means.

But that's not the point. The point is, awareness campaigns must have a call to action. Changing profile pictures make people feel comfortable that they 'did something to support' and in the end it doesn't matter. I'm not a US citizen, so it's up to you to decide what to do, but do something useful, not another fun game of replacing profile avatars so people think they're fighting for the cause while doing nothing.

True, I see a lot of these as well, and I don't care much either. This time however, they do have a "call to action", which is to call your representative. Now, I'm not a US-citizen either but from my understanding that's the best you can do as a normal person.

This article pointed out something I hadn't really thought about: random album pictures on facebook get more real estate than profile pictures in the news feed. If I started posting political items through that huge block of news feed, I bet people will start ignoring all my posts...

An alternative would be to make a regular post. I plan to post the following to FB, Google+, and Twitter:

"This is my only comment today because I do not want to be censored by the passage of SOPA. #sopablackout"

Nice. Although I do not live in the US i'll do it because it's the right thing to do.

> I do not live in the US

Not as relevant as it once was.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3428991

I think this is an awesome idea. This article needs more traction.

This Chrome add on to "Invite All" of your friends could be useful, however, facebook is blocking me from inviting everyone. Advice welcome!

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ofcnbnhefnmjancehe...

How about a "delete your Facebook account in protest of sopa" day?

How about Facebook and Google block all profiles and search content from those companies who support SOPA?

[It's cool if you down vote, but please let me know why. This is not Reddit]

What does this accomplish again?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com