june gloom on 17/1/2012 at 19:46
So Rock Paper Shotgun's blacking out tomorrow in protest of SOPA and PIPA, along with juggernauts like Wikipedia and Reddit, as well as Destructoid, Mojang, Wordpress and GoG.
These are serious moves by all these sites, especially ones that have advertisers to worry about. SOPA has effectively been defanged, but that doesn't mean it's not still dangerous, and PIPA is still around too.
There's really no point in me going through all the reasons why these bills are monstrous and need to be stopped -- or how it affects
everyone, not just Americans (have heard a few non-Yanks claiming that SOPA and PIPA don't matter to them because the bills are just for the 'dirty Americans' who deserve it anyway for being so barbaric and uncultured, unlike Europeans.) Instead I'll just link to (
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20111122/04254316872/definitive-post-why-sopa-protect-ip-are-bad-bad-ideas.shtml) this instead, so you can catch up.
There's a huge outcry over this, and what's more is that several members of Congress are starting to catch on. The blacking out of Wikipedia may perhaps be the biggest hit -- there's a lot of people who haven't been paying attention, and suddenly they can't access Wikipedia. Unless they're well and truly stupid (always a possibility) it's going to hit them that -- holy shit, maybe these "anti-piracy" bills need looking at.
Pretty much half the internet -- and most of the sites I regularly visit -- are going to be shut down tomorrow. While I doubt TTLG has plans to do anything like that, I
am curious to see what the other titloggers have to say about all this.
Kolya on 17/1/2012 at 22:31
Might as well make a political statement out of TTLG's recurring downtimes.
heywood on 17/1/2012 at 22:35
This is a good first step, but I doubt it's enough. Coverage of SOPA has been nil in the mainstream media and will probably go back to nil after tomorrow. The impact of this legislation is going to be difficult to get across to people in a headline or 60 sec news blurb, so I think most people are going to go "huh, what?" unless the blackouts repeat. It doesn't help that there's an element of protectionism in this legislation, which plays well in the US right now.
Europe thumbed their collective noses at America when the DMCA passed, but soon enough there was an EU equivalent. So, yeah I agree that the rest of the world should be paying attention.
And I sincerely hope there aren't any Anonymous hacks or DOS attacks in protest of SOPA. That will get all the wrong attention.
Scots Taffer on 17/1/2012 at 22:36
Thanks for the link, that was a worthwhile read as this has been relatively low on my radar. It sounds like the entertainment industry needs a fundamental business model shake up, but there's as much chance of that as there being Internet infrastructure savvy judges like the article mentions. Just a clusterfuck, really.
Azaran on 17/1/2012 at 23:10
(
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-16590585)
Sopa also requires search engines to remove foreign infringing sites from their results, a provision absent in Pipa.
This SOPA thing is beginning to look a lot like what China does by blocking sites and search results. Not good at all...
Vernon on 18/1/2012 at 00:29
Sounds like Google and facebook are both just going to put up protest banners on Wednesday, but I think their not going black like wikipedia is a total copout. Steam ought to go offline too.
heywood on 18/1/2012 at 01:49
Facebook going down for a day would be epic. Now that would get people's attention.
demagogue on 18/1/2012 at 05:12
Looks like a number of sites are just blanking stuff out, cf. Google.
ANTSHODAN on 18/1/2012 at 05:20
Yeah, I was playing Skyrim, wanted to look something up on a wiki and was met by the big obnoxious SOPA sign. Meh, it's already frustrating, but hell, I support the cause entirely.
and "a certain imageboard's" post text is all covered with spoiler tags now
not that I'd ever be going there of course.
I hate myself too
Azaran on 18/1/2012 at 05:31
Google's still up, but Wikipedia's out
