I agree. Taking a stand and putting up a banner, or a click-through page, etc is fine. But information services like Google and Wikipedia shouldn't actually be shut off in a way that makes the information inaccessible.
And that's exactly what SOPA would do. Permanently. Nobody is preventing you from accessing today's Wikipedia content on your own this Wednesday - go download a copy of their db right now if you're that scared and fearful of a day without it. The point is a strong demonstration of what the world would be like with SOPA/PIPA. It's necessary.
We should certainly get people's attention by doing something very overt like replacing every article with a big dark SOPA message, but there really should still be a way to click through to the information.
> We should certainly get people's attention by doing something very overt like replacing every article with a big dark SOPA message, but there really should still be a way to click through to the information.
That's fine for us mega-nerds, but what about everyone else?
Uh, no. That's not the same token at all.
I actually don't know what it's going to be like to work on Wednesday without Wikipedia. But I think it's in all our interests to find out and put a face on these bills.