Senators drop support of piracy bill after protests
 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/busine...M9P_story.html

Amazing to watch the power of the internet, shows you how powerful it can be.

Show me what democracy looks like!

THIS is what democracy looks like!

(To borrow an Occupy chant)

Good work everyone!

It's been a terrible day for me though. Everything I use to procrastinate has been blacked out. I actually had to do some work.

"Vast swaths of the Web effectively went dark" is a huge exaggeration.

Wikipedia is one of 2 sites (the other one I have never heard of) that completely went dark. Craigslist made people read through an opening letter before the reader looks down to "go to (regular craigslist)" which lets them search as normal. Then there is an excerpt on the screen about SOPA but that is easily ignored if you don't care. Google only blackened its name on the search engine but searching was unchanged.

If SOPA fails it probably fails for a number of reasons. The mode of protest by these sites was nothingness because it probably did not have a big impact on most people.

ETA: Wikipedia and the other site urged other sites to participate in the blackout but Google, facebook, and twitter said "helllll no we aren't losing money over this." LOL.

http://technolog.msnbc.msn.com/_news...9?preview=true

Eh. The mobile version of The Wiki was working just fine today -- wasn't blacked out at all. I didn't come across anything else blacked out.

Count me among those who didn't really get the point of the blackout.

A number of blogs I read were blacked out:
Regretsy
Cakewrecks
Some other smaller ones

Wiki obviously. A number of blogs were also talking about it.

Oh blogs. I don't read blogs but I guess some people do.

The only major and widely used site that was dark is wikipedia. Even that is blah.

Wow!

Well, not exactly. As the article states, Google "went dark" by making their google face literally dark. It just didn't go dark in the sense of shutting down. Semantics? Absolutely. And not an exaggeration if you want to split hairs.

What this should show people is if you browbeat your elected officials, they WILL listen. Well, they'll listen if you can get several hundred people to browbeat them along with you. The other thing this should show people is that you should know what your electeds are supporting and what they're not, and keep holding their feet to the fire.

This site had a great blackout. don't usually go to this site, but thanks to my niece I had to check it out today.

http://theoatmeal.com/sopa/

DaffyKD

The need to split hairs is exactly why it is an exaggeration. ;)

If this is an important topic to people. I do not consider it of particular importance. Yet we need people to fight for different causes, even if there is no consensus regarding the importance. :)

The fact that sites like Google, facebook, and twitttter either did no blackout or a halfassed blackout means something.

Google's "black out" included a petition that was signed by 4.5 million.

MC: It was my understanding that the point of the blackout was to demonstrate what the Internet would look like under SOPA. Key sites that would probably be shut down completely under SOPA obviously are against SOPA and used this as a way to show the effects. In reality, far more sites would be rendered useless under SOPA than those participating.

Except not really. Like I said, their mobile pages were working just fine, which made me wonder why they bothered. (Even my middle schooler talked at supper about how he needed to look something up while at school so he pulled up the mobile version of The Wiki on his laptop.)

I'll admit it. I used Google a number of time yesterday and never even noticed this.

I don't think it shows that at all -- who was browbeating anybody?

My guess is that petitions and lobbyists for The Wiki et al did far more to convince some politicians to rethink their support of SOPA (in its present form) than did any "going dark."

Exactly.

Yeah, I get that was their point. That was not the message I received, though. The message I received was

http://www.smyrnavinings.com/blog/wp...is-falling.jpg

Claims like "this is what the web would be like if SOPA passes" strike me as so hyperbolic as to be counterproductive.

The Oatmeal is THE BEST. Props to my awesome Alpha Chi Rho friend who turned me on to it.

And yes, he's had his content pirated so many times it's not funny - so if anyone is well qualified to say that this bill is over the top and stupid, it's him.

I can only imagine how many "chiefs of staff" were getting chewed out by their members yesterday, thinking SOPA was a below-the-radar easy sign-off, limited opposition bill.

Yes, critiquing people on what they choose to wear on Halloween is a topic of much greater importance than a proposed bill that would allow the Government to shut down websites based on loosely defined circumstances.;) GC could be shut down just based on whats in the "you laugh you lose" thread.

All snark aside, hopefully the media blitz generated by SOPA and PIPA will wake the American people up and allow them to see that these idiots in Washington are slowly trying to strip us of our rights and freedoms. Not even one month into 2012 and we have had the NDAA signed into law allowing the military to detain U.S. citizens indefinitely without trial, these web censorship bills, and now the Enemy Expatriation Act which if passed would give the Government the ability to strip the citizenship of U.S. citizens... Police State anyone?

I agree, I wager the web looked the same for most people.

The most votes on the MSN poll seemed to be respondents who do not surf the web, do not go to blogs, did not notice a black Google icon, and/or do not go to wikipedia or could not care less if wikipedia is inaccessbile. Afterall, the web and other modes of technology have an impact on society and socialization but what did we do before this stuff existed? We found less lazy and more creative ways to find answers to our questions and procrastination tools.

+1

I agree 100%. You are being jokingly sarcastic but this is exactly how I feel.

I consider perceived discrimination to be a larger indication of human liberty than what the government does with the Internet. But, like I said, there are millions of people in this world and tons of human liberties to address. Not everyone fights the battles that I find worth fighting and I will not fight the battles that everyone else finds worth fighting.

This is the world's most ironic "GET OFF MY LAWN" post ... honestly, I'm surprised.

Newsflash:
I have been saying what I said for 10+ years on and off Greekchat.

Do you have other profundities to share? LOL.

A flute with no holes, is not a flute.

And 10 years may represent multiple complete lifecycles for technology, which seems like a long time to hold a static view.

Yet I still hold it. I just wanted you to spare yourself the pretend irony and surprise.

I wasn't feigning surprise, for whatever it's worth.

[separately]
While it's a convenient narrative that the "Power of the Internet" won the day, I'm much more inclined to go with MC's view, that there was a substantive shift in support behind the scenes based on potential consumer outcomes.

Actually, the version of events even in this thread - "This is the power of the people!" - seems overly congratulatory, possibly to a dangerous extent. SOPA was a dangerous bill, but I think the reasons were much less insidious than, say, Pike thinks.

I think it was poorly written, but the intention - protection of intellectual property - is actually an important step toward protecting rights long trampled over in the modern economy. Without such protections, there's no incentive to create - and the classic "Patent Bargain" approach to other IP is failing miserably. The bill took a piss-poor angle of attack - requiring third-party oversight, particularly against their own interests, is a recipe for disaster, but I don't think the bill language was vague out of a desire to eliminate the internet through the back door.

The only benefit to this awkward narrative appears to be ... those who crafted it, and those sites that "participated'? Very odd, to me.

^^^I agree with what you said about being over congratulatory. That article didn't say the bill itself was being dropped.

I was using Wiki all day yesterday. Just searched what I needed on Yahoo!, went to the result that went to Wiki, and hit "cached." The screenshot still gave me what I needed. Blackout fail.

When I ask what the bill is about, everyone says "It's going to censor the internet!!" and "This black screen is what the internet will look like." The first response is vague as hell and the second is highly exaggerated which makes me wonder exactly how many people actually know what they are opposing.

One of the most bizarre parts of all of this, from my perspective, has been that Chris Dodd has been the most outspoken lobbyist in favor of the bill. A few years before he left the Senate, he said he wouldn't become a lobbyist. Now, I know everyone has to pay the bills, but it's weird to hear him basically threaten to withhold political contributions to politicians who don't support the legislation.