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.