Slashdot Mirror
Net Companies Consider the "Nuclear Option" To Combat SOPA
Atypical Geek writes "Alec Liu of Fox News reports that Amazon, Facebook and Google are considering a coordinated blackout of the internet to protest SOPA, the Stop Online Privacy Act being debated in Congress. From the article: 'Such a move is drastic. And though the details of exactly how it would work are unclear, it's already under consideration, according to Markham Erickson, the executive director of NetCoalition, a trade association that includes the likes of Google, PayPal, Yahoo, and Twitter.
With the Senate debating the SOPA legislation at the end of January, it looks as if the tech industry's top dogs are finally adding bite to their bark, something CNET called "the nuclear option." "When the home pages of Google.com, Amazon.com, Facebook.com, and their Internet allies simultaneously turn black with anti-censorship warnings that ask users to contact politicians about a vote in the U.S. Congress the next day on SOPA," Declan McCullagh wrote, "you'll know they're finally serious."'"
...not among politicians, but among all the kiddies who can not communicate anymore but via Facebook. Under-18 Doomsday guaranteed.
Religous speak to God. Insane are spoken to by God. When all shut up, one can finally hear Shostakovich in peace
And when they don't in fact do that, are we expected to be at all surprised?
"Alec Liu of Fox News reports that Amazon, Facebook and Google are considering a coordinated a coordinated blackout of the internet to protest SOPA, the Stop Online Privacy Act ... *SNIP*
PIRACY act, it's the Stop Online PIRACY act. Talk about a grammar failure. /GrammarNazi.
If you believe in privacy, and believe you have "nothing to hide" at the same time, you're a goddammed idiot
I'd love to see it. I could believe it from Amazon and maybe Google, but also Facebook? That's tougher.
Paranoia check, am I the only one whose links fail to post to their failbook wall only when they're political speech, and never just some vapid crap?
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Let people access facebook, etc, but only in a tiny little window. Have the rest black with a message "Call your politician right now to remove this".
Money is speech, and one interest group fights another interest groups legislation.
I would love to see it. Then people would start giving a sh*t about their freedoms.
Isn't a collusive action like this no better than the legislation these corporations are trying to stop? Blocking the internet is blocking the internet, regardless of who does it and why.
Rather then using everyday people as hostages.
I have lots of dealings involving PayPal, and I dont have time to be part of some stunt even though I dont support SOPA.
A simple splash screen is fine.
Too bad its only for a day.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Google, Facebook, Amazon,Yahoo, etc should continue as normal but show the supports of censorship just how much fun being censored can be!
Google/Yahoo can simply don't return any results that include the names of Senators, and Representatives that supported the act, bonus points if you can still detect NEGATIVE news about them and return those results, don't return listings for products from companies that support the ACT on Amazon/Google/Yahoo, Facebook stop having the profiles come up in searches and don't let any posts hit news feeds even to people who are all ready friends or followers.
Frankly after such a black out of those organizations I'd be real surprised if the thing passes, and if it does is not repealed in a week. It would also give a big boost to those who don't support this stuff as it will put them front and center before the consumer for a change.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
You want panic? That'll be panic the likes of which you've never seen.
Have gnu, will travel.
... and do it. Either you have a backbone or you don't. Pick a day, middle of the week, say Jan 12th, and just do it. Announce you're doing it, and watch the others fall in line. True leadership doesn't wait.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
Before a law passes that would declare it terrorism! Unless they pass a law retroactively declaring discussing the option a terroristic threat, which I wouldn't put past the lawmakers... Uh oh, I should shut up, I'm giving them ideas.
I expect that something like this would be radically successful, but it's an option that shouldn't be utilized except in dire circumstances (such as against SOPA) otherwise it'll end up like wikimedia's 'personal appeal from Jimmy Wales' where people would generally ignore it and go about their business. Hopefully there is an internet 'blackout' in this situation, but amazon, google, et all don't make this a regular thing.
In a bit of shameless internet panhandling, I accept Litecoin Donations at Lbd2oH9QsthD1GfuUXPyka12YxvWJYnBVf
Shut down everything on the weekends from now till then. That'll get the point accross.
... and underlines the travesty that democracy has become. It's bad enough corporations write the legislation now they're going to effectively start voting on them by themselves.. this should scare the living daylights out of us and not be some kind a source for celebration.
Just to disturb the dyslexics out there :)
"...and their Internet allies simultaneously turn black with anti-censorship warnings that ask users to contact politicians about a vote in the U.S. Congress the next day on SOPA."
Are they going to geo-locate IP addresses so those of us that don't have a congress-critter to talk to don't see what, to us, is a pointless message?
http://harridanic.com
What will most likely happen is you'll get a black box on the page with the message, then a button to click to continue on with your search/purchase/whatever.
I would fully support complete uavailability from these websites for a day/set time period - it would really be effective. But it'll never happen as long as there's money to be made/lost.
No Amazon, no Facebook? I'd be willing to forgo Google in return. But then ...
And they complain about the OWS protesters not having their act together ...
replacing DNS. With browser manufacturers onboard, it wouldn't be nearly as disruptive as one might think - particularly as nothing more than a new, preferred method that lived alongside the old method. Or another nuclear options is some combination of this and encrypting/onion-routing the entire Web, so that no one can tell where content is actually coming from.
What TFA mentions is an attempt to barter by threatening suicide - not war.
With the thousands of accountants and investors constantly pushing the bottom line, it is a surprise that companies like Google are just now awakening to the threat that, if used by the media companies, threatens the very existence of their core services.
Just have the main pages display a message with a "continue to site" button and any other (long URL) access works as normal.
That way nothing breaks and everyone can still use the sites but you will still interrupt enough people to get the message across.
Just reroute all known RIAA/ MPAA IP addresses to banner pages, with an option to enter a series of captchas to continue to the originally intended page...hehehe, technically it's not "blocking"...just make it "safer"
When the politicians admit
a) they don't understand the tech
b) are willing to take the positions of the media companies that donate to them
So the US is led by ludites who have sold their favor to the corporations. And this (the US) is the self descibed "leader of the free world".
Where is the power of the people in this process? Where is the representation of the taxed?
Where is the educated and informed action that is supposed to happen in a democracy?
Do we need more proof we are living in a corporatocracy ?
Isn't SOPA really about destroying the ICANN monopolism in favor of distributed DNS?
Piracy will never be stopped by just changing the configuration on some DNS when entire jurisdictions with real cops and judges have already failed. But one can dream...
I am sure we could find a link to a less unbalanced "News" site. (I hate using quotes that much but I can't refer to that biased political commentary network as a news agency, for that matter there are few legit news sources anymore, its all just commentary and opinion pieces anymore, but thats another rant.)
It frustrates me, I love Fox's animated shows but despise their political side.
It's only paranoia if your wrong...
It is a good idea, if the block shows a notice about the issue at hand. Wikipedia Italy did the same to protest something similar.
SOPA/PIPA in the end forces self-censorship, Americans might as well try an early taste of it. Also, nobody in their right mind should keep their e-business there, and its about time the world breaks with ICANN and switch to alternatives like OpenNIC.
I don't agree with that "nuclear" wording made by CNET. For a moment i though either the nuclear power industry was involved and would agree to a literal "blackout" or something unlikely involving weapons of mass destruction...
Also i hope they make clear this is something concerning USA legislative branch, aka Congress, and its their citizens the ones getting the worst. Might be painful at first, but The World will learn to route around America. So the "blackouts" should be limited to American IPs.
The notice might also show a list of who are supporting this bill, and call for boycotts, go daddy style; an action which seems to have gotten some people nervous.
Artix
Your Linux, your init.
From the summary: "...to protest SOPA, the Stop Online Privacy Act being debated in Congress..."
In other news, Facebook has just announced it's support to SOPA.
These companies ought to get together and realize that a number of pieces of legislation that negatively impact internet services (well, except Amazon maybe) have already been passed by lobbyists supporting the music, television, and cinema industries. SOPA is only the most recent in a long chain, and will not be the last. Yet, Google, Facebook, and other network industry leaders have much more cash lying around. The difference, of course, is that the content generation companies deploy a greater share of their capital to Washington, while the internet service companies invest in growth... or buy other companies.
If the content generation industry isn't going to stop lobbying for more restrictive legislation that increasingly allows them to sue Google and friends for copyright infringement conducted by their users, maybe it's time for a consortium of internet services to form an equities fund that will purchase and break up a selected few content providers -- like Sony. The point wouldn't be to acquire them for long-term corporate matrimony a la AOL-TimeWarner, which doesn't work well: rather, to degrade the opposition's lobbying capacity by breaking up a few key players into disparate and separately governed spin-offs with low capital reserves.
I'm not "oh shit"-ing because there might be a global demonstration against what the US government is attempting to do. I'm "oh shit"-ing because many businesses are willing to interrupt their business to get notice and make a stand. Of course, this is so they can preserve what they have now, but this is also "oh shit" because they are seeing the future beyond tomorrow or the next quarter.
It's getting serious.
Try "Justifying Millions and Hopefully Billions in Spending Act" -- now that's a lot closer to reflecting the wishes of politicians.
Sometimes I think I'm the only one who realizes that government is motivated entirely by money, same as any private business. At the top of the pyramid, the bigger your budget, the better positioned you are to exploit that cash flow for personal gain. It's really that simple.
instead of blocking everyone, why not send requests from .us or gov domains to a custom page or block entirely.
--
Alec Liu of Fox News reports that Amazon, Facebook and Google are considering a coordinated blackout of the internet to protest SOPA
Even if Congress relents, they should do it. It would be just too cool of a spectacle not to!
It would also be fun to read the next day in the news how American office worker productivity had a temporary spike upwards.
This. Though the US domains aren't really controlled by the government, so that's not really necessary. I like the .gov block, though there should be a way to filter all of the mobile addresses used on the hill as well.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Google, Facebook and Amazon should block access from their public IPs, Facebook should shutdown accounts of SOPA supporters and Google should remove search results for them. This includes government IPs and accounts.
Stop playing nice. Make life troublesome for them.
Why don't people get it yet. Media companies rule the world right now due to a few things. First, they dump dirty money into lobbying (both legal and illegally) to keep the politicians fat dumb and happy. Next thing, and this one is kind of important, They control the general popultaion's opinion by controlling information and shaping it to fit their agenda. All of you that think you get the real news just by using the internet have a lot to learn. Get used to it, or get you mom to stop buying Sony, Warner Bros etc.. crap. and put these asshats out.
but for people like me losing those services will not be noticed. I think SOPA is insane but except for google I don't use any of the other services and google is not the only search shop in town. I can see mostly parents who rely on youtube and facebook as baby sitters being affected.
Why not just de-list all the SOPA supporters from Google and see what happens.
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
You can't combat piracy. Externalities are a cost of doing business. Anyone who thinks otherwise is kidding him/herself.
There's exactly one way to maximize profit, and that is to deliver a product that people are willing to pay for at a price that they are willing to pay. The pirates were never your customers and never will be, and the sooner the companies accept that and focus on the real problems (massively overpricing everything when first released, delivering products that can't easily be moved between devices because of the restrictive/broken DRM, and the declining quality of entertainment products in general), they'll have better profits. That's not what SOPA/PIPA and similar legislation are about, however. They're about eliminating legitimate lower-cost competition.
What scares the industry most is that these days, any jackass in his home could make a movie of comparable quality to most of the non-SFX Hollywood films. Moderately high-end HD cams cost a couple of grand or three—well within the price range of most people if they are willing to save up for a bit. You can buy halogen lights at Home Depot for fifty bucks, then rebuild the reflectors yourself and build your own barn doors for just about nothing. And there are millions of people out there who can act, not just a few dozen in Hollyweird, so there's no shortage of available talent.
In effect, this means that commercial movies are too expensive by about a factor of a thousand. But instead of finding ways to take advantage of new technologies to cut their production and distribution costs, they are instead focusing on destroying new means of distribution to prevent competition. You see, YouTube is in a great position to deliver paid content from independent producers to consumers. The studios know this, and they know that if the Internet turns into anything approaching a free market, they're basically out of business. For this reason, they do everything within their power to kill such sites—not because they can be used to pirate Hollywood movies, but because they can be used to sell non-Hollywood movies without having to spend millions of dollars in infrastructure. That ability of the general public to do what the major studios do is the greatest threat to their power.
Game studios are similar. There's no reason why people who want to write games should go work for one of those sweatshops, working unholy hours for terrible pay. You can go off on your own and work with a handful of people and write a great game, sell it, and make a fair amount of money. If everyone did this, the sweatshop game studios of the world would collapse, and the Internet makes that not only possible, but downright easy. They know this, and it terrifies them. So they do what they can to create liability for any ISP that might dare to distribute software, thus discouraging the practice.
And so on. It's not about piracy. It's about control. They want to control the entire content production industry, and our Congresspeople are almost all too fucking stupid to realize that these laws only serve to turn the big studios into a state-protected oligopoly and thwart small businesses' attempts to compete. And this is why we don't have jobs in this country.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
I'd like to introduce a new RFC, the SOFA initiative. Stop Offline Fucktard Action. These politicians are SOFA kings. SOFA king stupid to believe that the they could shove the Internet genie back into the lamp. How about every one black out their sites starting today with just one word SOFA........all of mine will be blocked as of today. Anyone..............
It should be a black page with a short explanation of SOPA and then have faces of all the politicians and companies backing it and links to where people can complain.
It really isn't right for Google et al to do this. Each congress member has paid handsomely for their position, and it comes with certain rights and expectations. One is the right to sneak through these kind of laws to help pay back, in a manner of speaking, those that helped them get to where they are today.
This has been the status quo for decades and people need to honor that and understand that they have no right to mess with it.
If they're going to stop working and drag their feet on getting anything done, they should call it the "Republican option". Nuclear option implies a device that's working.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
If they piss of the powers that be they might just be "indefinitely detained" by the military. Yes, thanks Obama and the traitor Democrats and Republicans in congress for gutting the constitution on 12/31.
Dallas Real Estate
It seems a bit odd to try a blackout the day before a vote.
It would be more to the point , and achieve more if everyone
went off line for 2 or 3 days at least a week in advance of the vote.
Then go back on line, and once again blackout the day before
as a reminder.
If you're going to protest, at least make sure the message sticks.
The internet has always had an important part in politics, but it would be difficult for anyone to say that the internet is a political machine.
Jump forward to 2012 and we have a virtual doomsday, forced by politicians upon the internet, causing the machine to BE political, not just have a role. This Pre-Mayan apocalypse will be a revelation at first - a change of such massive proportions that everyone will be stunned by it - and then will morph over time to become part of the internet vs politics gamesmanship that is sure to follow for many years to come.
This will be a truly awesome spectacle for some time.
When the foot seeks the place of the head, the line is crossed. Know your place. Keep your place. Be a shoe.
... and along with it all the government agencies that have supported and executed legislation against freedom of speech / fair use.
"I love my job, but I hate talking to people like you" (Freddie Mercury)
New Rule: Mandatory IQ testing for all state and national-level politicians. Just think of the time, money, and frustration we could collectively avoid.
Ask me about my sig!
Block the congress, house of representatives, RIAA, and any supporting ISPs and businesses.
143.228.0.0/16 is the house
156.33.0.0/16 is the senate
76.74.24.0/24 is RIAA
Actually, this is the half nuclear option. The real nuclear option is internet turn-off day. Just hit the big red switch and watch EVERYTHING stop.
"Almost every single congressman's mailbox/e-mail server will be flooded with messages, it would be like a legal DoS."
Or rather would be, had google not shut down gmail.
you're just hurting the customers that use the site not the people supporting SOPA. why not just cut off the people supporting SOPA instead to demonstrate what SOPA does? heck, if net companies pull the plug on themselves, isn't that what the people supporting SOPA want in the first place?
Yes, and the harmonization process involves negotiating treaty consent in a closed process, then bringing it back and claiming in the face of democratic opposition "we've already promised this" without any democratic consent in the first place.
I wouldn't complain about my life suffering a DOS day for these companies to band together and make a point.
Real protest involves things that actually inconvenience or include a plausible threat to the the stability of government. Things like randomly throwning away packets requesting .gov or .mil or select other domain names might be a good start.
Dropping emails to .gov might be another.
Adding porn to email from .gov might be yet another.
Anything which undermines their trust in technology as a lever to control us.
It doesn't have to be big, you don't really have to risk much... but you do have to act in some small way and take some risk if you want to have any possible gain.
GoDaddy experienced fallout just from expressing support for the Bill, but which companies/industries are actually buying the politicians introducing the Bill? Surely there is some Christoforo/GoDaddy retribution to be visited upon those entities. It is time to name those names.
Faux news broke a story!?
Will it piss off a lot of people? Of course it will... but most people are not going to understand or even want to understand what the underlying reason is that these companies might have for objecting to the bill in the first place. To some, it might simply appear like they might be trying to manipulate the government into passing (or not passing) laws which only affect specific corporate interests, since so few people understand how important concepts like end-to-end communication actually are. The government could conceivably redirect all anger directed at them squarely at the companies that are conspiring to pull this off... and might even be able to swing convincing people that the companies are being the bad guys here. Indeed, a responsible government would have an obligation driven by their responsibility to *NOT* alter their policies simply in light of this proposed blackout - just as certainly as they would have an obligation to not surrender to ransom demands by any group of people who are objecting to particular government policies. The US government is considering SOPA because they are completely clueless, and do not understand how it will break the Internet. What is Google's, Amazon's, and Facebook's excuse? Retaliating against an unjust law with an even greater injustice that only hurts completely innocent or indifferent parties is not the answer.
I do not advocate SOPA for an instant... but this sort of proposed retaliation is just wrong. The government must be made to listen to the reasoning of how SOPA breaks some things that are very fundamental operating principles of the Internet. If they will not listen to experts telling them this now, how seriously are they liable to take those experts when they metaphorically take their bat and ball and go home, acting all too conspicuously like spoiled children who are only angry that they are not getting their way.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Congressional staff most certainly use the Internet.
Amazon, Facebook and Google gone eh? I would miss Google, but the other 2 could stay off permanently and the web would be a better place :P
"The first time I got drunk, I got married. The second time I bought a chimpanzee, after that I stayed sober" Arian Seid
As addicted to the Internet as I am, go for it. If that's what it takes to get the message across to the politicians catering to Hollywood and a few other special interests rather than the broader public, it will be well worth it. I don't want *MY* content taken down because some dimbulb in some media conglomerate mistakenly thinks that my content remotely resembles theirs, and there is no cost to them making a mistake, so they go ahead and shoot off a takedown message.
They came after his planet ... and he started working to find a solution.
Then they came after his child.
Nobody comes after his child.
GORE
Summer, 2012.
of the US govt to use indefinite detentionn ?
wouldn't this be a terrorist act ?
their bluffing. although it should be interesting to watch some political heads explode as they have to figure out how to get campaign contributions from CEOs which have been renditioned.
Absolute statements are never true
Watch real carefully now. This is the part where the potential for blatant corruption is highest. This is when, during the tap room buildout, the federal government agreed to pay the telecoms truckloads of taxpayer money to "offset the costs."
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
What they should also do is packet filter their traffic and drop all packets going to or from a *.gov address.
Cut the government from the net, so they can experience it first.
Your post needs to be turned into a television commercial.
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."
I think you underestimate the cost to do something with higher production values (like, say, Battlestar Galactica). On the other hand, lots of smaller, lighter fare will be (well, *is*) cheaper now. Good points, though.
Although the power of corporations scare me; I do support actions for good. I am not easily manipulated but if the wankers who govern our respective countries fail it's people, with typical old skool ignorance, then maybe someone with invested interest, and a bit of muscle, should step up to the plate. The open web isn't just important for me and you, it's in essence a fundamental constituent of modern society. Don't let the internet turn into the brain washing, one-sided, commercial, shit that makes it onto tv.
Instead of trying to impose their bans on the entire world like SOPA tries to do, Belarus wants to mandate that you register a country-code TLD if you're going to do business with their citizens and industry. If any company violates their local laws, they can easily pull the domain registration and take them offline.
Without pissing off the entire world to do it.
Despite the bleating cries of "Censorship" on the Slashdot page discussing the idea, I don't see it as censorship at all. They're not saying you can't register a foreign business in Belarus and obtain a national TLD to server their market; they're just mandating that you open a local office and follow THEIR laws while doing business in THEIR country.
It's the first rational approach to the proliferation of .coms that think they're above any nation's laws that I've ever seen. I'm sure Belarus has other social problems people will flag, but don't throw out a good idea just because you don't like the source.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
No, wait. Don't shut down Twitter, cause it is THE MEDIA that will MOVE the event. Or something.
Accepting that politicians are inherently corrupt and there's nothing you can do about it isn't a natural state of humanity. We could use more people with faith in their politicians. That way when that faith is abused there'd be some shock, instead of acceptance mixed with defeat and irritation.
Oh, and if you need some faith restored and live in American, check out Alan Grayson, and if you can spare it please donate. After he pointed out the hypocrisy of our health care system the powers that be came down on him like a ton of bricks and ran him out of office with money...
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
What about Verisign, Comodo, etc stop authenticating certificates, or even flagging certificates as fake or revoked?
Despite a few webpages going down, this will stop most e-commerce, online banking, etc, basically stopping the flow of MONEY via the Internet. This will bring worldwide attention to the issue, and possible get other governments involved.
Also could Verisign, etc be targeted by SOPA, as by issuing certifcates used for encryption could be used by pirates to hide their information transactions...
Also what would happen to sites like github, sourceforge, codeforge codeplex, etc, since they all host projects that could potentially be used by priates, crackers, etc... Could all our favourite opensource hosts become quiet?
any jackass in his home could make a movie of comparable quality to most of the non-SFX Hollywood films.
Where would the "jackass in his home" obtain the music with which to set the scene? Say a character is listening to a song on his boombox; how would that get licensed for use in the film? There are rumors on the Internets that over half the budget of the film Clerks was spent on music clearance.
Game studios are similar. There's no reason why people who want to write games should go work for one of those sweatshops
Other than that the makers of the major video game consoles are more willing to allow "one of those sweatshops" to publish a game than to allow a home-based family business to publish a game.
http://lamarsmith.house.gov/>Lamar Smith a congressman who's district includes part of Austin, is the main congressman behind this. He's a republican who brags about "lifting the burden of regulations that is strangling small businesses" while at the same time peddling this filth.
I would support it.
If you could get all the porn sites to go along with Google and Amazon, you just might have something.
What scares the industry most is that these days, any jackass in his home could make a movie of comparable quality to most of the non-SFX Hollywood films. Moderately high-end HD cams cost a couple of grand or three—well within the price range of most people if they are willing to save up for a bit. You can buy halogen lights at Home Depot for fifty bucks, then rebuild the reflectors yourself and build your own barn doors for just about nothing. And there are millions of people out there who can act, not just a few dozen in Hollyweird, so there's no shortage of available talent.
People have limited leisure time and they want to use it to see the very best, or at least, the most popular so they can discuss it with peers and strangers. They want to see the biggest (or latest big) stars, the top directors and screenwriters, the slickest cinematography, special effects, set design, etc. This is the "winner take all" syndrome that some pundits have written about.
Every few years an independent professional sports league comes along to provide a low price, "fan-friendly" alternative to the "greedy" major sports leagues. After all, there are lots of talented young athletes who recently starred in college ball who would love a shot at the pros. IIRC the last one that succeeded was in the 1970s (the American Basketball Association, which eventually merged with the NBA). The others have all failed, because after an initial burst of fan enthusiasm, fans discovered that they couldn't care less about the careers of marginal talent (marginal in the sense that they weren't chosen for a roster in the big leagues - not that they didn't have serious playing skills).
The same is true of the professional golf. The PGA Tour consists of 125 of the top players in the world, and they attract large crowds. The minor league tours like Nationwide play for very sparse galleries.
So no, I don't think the competitive threat of crowdsourced movies is something that keep studio execs awake late at night.
I really doubt that Congress is ignorant of the effects of they choices. They WANT to limit the number of people with the power to create media. It is in their best interest if those who have the ability to be heard in public are dependent on them. Neither side will admit it, but that's why this kind of law is so prevalent. They WANT control for the sake of control, not for any sane reason. If they weren't power-mad crazy very few of them would run for congress, and I don't think that any would run for senator in any very large state. (New Hapmshire and Rhode Island aren't typical. They're small enough that sane Senators are possible. Don't know whether they're likely or not, as I haven't examined their history.)
There are scaling effects that have ensured that the US is governed by mad men, and controlled by media czars (who themselves are generally mad.)
P.S.: I'll grant that mad is a trifle vague. I mean more sociopath, but there's a touch of obsessive-compulsive in the mix too. If you aren't so driven, you won't put forth the effort needed to win an election in a large state, except, perhaps, as a representative. Even then only if someone else builds the power-base. And you'll OWE them.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Stop considering it, and do it.
The real nuclear action is to actually cut off access to your sites from first capital hill, then all .gov domains.
If someone is passing you on the right, you are an asshole for driving in the wrong lane.
Battlestar Galactica is a SFX-laden show. You'll notice I said non-SFX show. You know, like sitcoms, romantic comedies, and so on. Yes, the production values can suck if you don't know what you're doing, but it's not that hard a skill to learn. (This is coming from somebody who majored in communications as an undergrad.)
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
No need to go full nuclear... a tactical nuclear response would be enough. Just remove from root DNS any domain belonging to anyone (corporate or government) that supports SOPA. Or just delay by 60 seconds any response from DNS servers.
I think Google and Facebook have the biggest advantage here. Why don't they remove and/or block all pages and searches for those supporting SOPA. Let them see how SOPA will affect the internet. If campaign contributions can be made through Paypal, start blocking them in protest.
A much more effective option would be for Google to quietly blacklist all SOPA supporting companies, websites, & politicians from its search results. Or find the results and send them to a "access to this web page restricted due to support of SOPA" message.
Mean spirited and childish, but it would work.
On the other hand, I'm afraid such a blackout would have unintended consequences.
Instead of outright pulling the plug, what if each participant in the blackout (google, amazon, etc.) put up a page with a few paragraphs of information and a required captcha-like set of questions the user had to answer to proceed? The information/questions would be relevant to SOPA, copyright, etc.
That way, the black out could extend for longer than a day (if need be), and there would still be a way for users to use the services after a bit of education. This would educate the ignorant to the level of stupidity (or corruption) of our politicians for even considering this legislation.
And yet most TV shows these days are "reality TV" crap with amateur talent. And even non-reality shows are mostly actors and actresses that nobody has heard of. I'm not sure I buy that argument. Besides, the quality of most TV and movies these days is abysmal. It isn't exactly hard to do better. All you have to do is not suck. The major studios care more about cinematography than they do about plot, character development, or any of the other aspects of a good story. As long as the so-called "top" screenwriters keep churning out the same tired, old crap over and over, there will be significant room for improvement.
And yet, some of the most watched games on TV are college sports. Those other leagues didn't fail because of lack of name recognition. They failed because A. they didn't provide the same level of entertainment, B. they underpriced their offerings (leading people to assume that they must be crap), or C. the college leagues already filled that niche. Or maybe all of the above.
If it doesn't, it should. TV viewership is steadily declining, while YouTube viewership is steadily increasing. YouTube gets over three billion video views per day worldwide. That's up from three billion per month just a little over two years ago. That alone pretty strongly refutes your view.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
The RIAA and friends are such a massive pain in the arse that perhaps we should just let them have SOPA and see what happens. The parts of the Internet that will break the most are exactly that parts where media are discussed and demand is generated. Let the idiots go back to physical and OTA completely, and THEN they will see what "loss of revenue" really looks like.
"... and more and more now there are all kinds of electronic goodies available" -- Pink Floyd 1972
SOPA won't happen. It's "look at this hand and pay no attention to what the other is doing". NDAA has passed, potential war with Iran... all while people are panicked over something that could never become law, and while telcos continue to to wire-tap and Homeland Security rolls out MORE VIPR teams!!
I've said it before: Let it pass. Just give them everything and watch their revenue and economy shrivel and die.
The surest way to destroy anyone is to give them everything they want. I say let's do it. Let's stop the protests, let's have the drones and cameras and teams of people searching everyone all the time. Let them have their ego-jizz-filled securo-dream. Watch GDP plummet, watch the stock market crash, watch the riots as people tear their government limb from limb.
Let's stop fighting and accelerate the eventuality: Our democracy as it is can no longer stand. The constitution is great, lots of good ideas, I am all for it and the Bill of RIghts, but the system is so corrupt it cannot continue. Let's let the disease run it's course and let the patient go into a coma, to come out renewed and vibrant in the future. Any medical people here understand that many times the body's defense mechanism is it's own worst enemy. Let the virii kill the host. We'll rebuild and renew, we're Americans :-)
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These Companies have very powerful lobbyists and yet all they can do is make a threat to turn off their collective websites for a day or so. Come on. Its nothing more than an advertising stunt. In so much as they don't wish to look bad like certain web hosting companies. I want to believe these companies want to make a positive contribution to the SOPA issue and maybe they do. But considering they lobbying clout they have, im just afraid its nothing more than smoke and mirrors if the "blackout" is ment to sent a message to congress in and of itself.
The Net Coalition can make Hollywood effectively disappear from the Web.
And that is exactly what they should do.
No advertising or product sales or even a visible presence until the stock prices of these companies drops far enough that the members of the Net Coalition can buy the biggest MPAA studios and RIAA labels out of petty cash. Then fire the management of these companies and replace them with people who know something about music in thel digital age. I believe that the tech industry can probably manage the IP portfolios more rationally and profitably than the jackass incumbents in any case.
The *AA wants censorship? I think they should get it. Enough of it to destroy them.
Tech Public Policy stuff
What scares the industry most is that these days, any jackass in his home could make a movie of comparable quality to most of the non-SFX Hollywood films
And there are millions of people out there who can act, not just a few dozen in Hollyweird, so there's no shortage of available talent.
In effect, this means that commercial movies are too expensive by about a factor of a thousand.
The geek will rent a lamp and reflector and think that he has mastered theatrical lighting.
How to Train Your Dragon stands out from the animated pack because it makes an effort to be simple. The film was lit with motivated light sources --- the sun, a candle, even the glowing red flames of a dragon's fiery exhalation --- which meant that in low-light situations, darkness was a tool in its own right.
In all that he does --- whether it's live-action, animation, or 3-D ---- Richard Deakins has come to believe that less is more. He was reminded of this mantra not too long ago while giving a lighting seminar for animation cinematographers at Pixar:
"I had a bit of a laugh, actually. I was on a stage with all the things you'd think would be traditional to lighting. So, I lit the set in a very traditional way: with a hard light, lots of fill light, a back light, a front light, and a key light. I did this for about 20 minutes, and then I said, I can't keep this up anymore because I don't like lighting like this, at all."
He panned the camera around and saw an electrician standing by a work light. "Now that I really like," he said. "It's just the bare bulb in front of the angle of the face. To me, that's really good lighting. So I took everything down that I had been doing and I tried to do what I normally do."
How To Light Your Dragon
It is the same with any the hundreds of other arts and crafts that go into the production of a film.
The jackass does not understand story or script. He doesn't know how to recruit and motivate talent, amateur or professional. He won't know why he needs to build sets and props when green screen, CGI and motion capture give him a quick-and-dirty solution....
The Coens produced their remake of True Grit on a bare-bones budget of $38 million. But essential to the success of the film was the casting of Mattie Ross:
The standout performance has to be newcomer Hailee Steinfeld, who beat out 15,000 other girls for the part. Open casting calls often provide disappointing results, as nonprofessional actors tend to be just that --- not professional. 14-year-old Steinfeld proves she is a talent to watch, though --- she totally commands the screen with her strong-willed, stubborn character, and manages to hold her own against Bridges, Damon and Josh Brolin, who makes a brief but memorable appearance later in the film. It is a fantastic, powerful performance that is an absolute joy to watch.
True Grit (2010) (In User Reviews)
They decide to have a blackout and come back online to find out that they had an emergency vote and decided to get SOPA through while no one could see what happened.
When you cant win, ad hominem.
What's the benefit in waiting until the day before? As I understand it, Lamar Smith, the congressman who the MPAA bought to lead the attack on the internet, was trying to ram a vote through as fast as possible. The thing was headed to the floor before Christmas, it was only a few reps digging their heels in that delayed it long enough. Are we that sure congress won't just move the vote up and pass it before we get a chance to tell them not to? We know most congresscritters aren't going to suddenly decide they don't want free money from the MPAA and RIAA, and change their mind about the vote in the intervening time on their own.
What's the downside to doing it tomorrow for Google, Facebook, and Twitter anyway? Are they worried that Bing, Myspace, and... competitors to twitter and tumblr that presumably exist... are going to suddenly leap ahead if they go dark for a day?
And why are they talking about just a warning? Google should provide you with your congressperson's contact information IF your congresspeople support SOPA or haven't said they're against it and provide information on any of their opponents running for their seat who oppose SOPA. THAT will be an effective shot across the bow.
This has happened before .. ... ;-)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_World_Wide_Web_protest
though completely shutting down the sites would brown some political shorts
I think it should be named more like the "scorched earth" policy used by the Russians against Napoleon. I thought Amazon, Google, & Facebook were nuclear-free zones?
Tracy Johnson
Old fashioned text games hosted below:
http://empire.openmpe.com/
BT
and for the government to prevent mean old companies like them from doing this EVER again....
don't expect the youth of this nation to do what you expect.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
While I certainly oppose SOPA and am glad to have Google & Co. rallying support against it, I don't think this "blackout" is a good option. We oppose SOPA not just because we value freedom on the internet, but also because we don't appreciate big industries like the MPAA bossing us around and telling us how the internet should be run and then muscling the government into passing laws to enforce that. By letting Google et al pull off a stunt like this, it would be fighting fire with fire; it would be the other extreme trying to throw their weight around the same way industries supporting SOPA do now, and that would really make both sides seem just as bad. Both sides would be trying to tell us what is good for us, when the whole point of this battle is that only we get to decide that.
By resorting to this "nuclear" option, SOPA would just turn into a battle of the big industries, and the common man is taken out of the picture almost completely. We need to make sure the government understands that the issue isn't just about corporations and industries, it's about the lay people, and we need to fight it on our own. Again, that's not to say we don't appreciate the support of Google and Facebook and Amazon and so on, but their stake in this battle is different from ours, and we shouldn't let them represent us - we need to represent ourselves to get the point across. To that end, we should really pressure these companies not to go through with the blackout plan or to even threaten it, not because we all really love SOPA, but because we don't want our message to be brushed aside. If they ignore us or go through with it while trying to insist that it's "for the best," then they really wouldn't be any better than the MPAA or anyone else trying to tell us what's good for us.
Lobby groups smear money, and promises of relection support. Therefore SOPA will pass.
The true politicians who listen to their constituents will be overruled.
Leslie Satenstein Montreal Quebec Canada
Prove it. Prove that it isn't owned by someone else. Then take that evidence proving a negative to a court, fight the district attorney, convince a judge that your personal site was wrongfully blocked. And then your site will be unblocked.
Until they do it again.
I actually like that system. So, I can mass-mail complaints about every SOPA-supporting corporate/governmental website in the world, having them all taken down according to SOPA?
Oc course, I won't bother showing up in court when they claim their website isn't infringing anything. So they eventually get back online.
Until I - or anyone else - do it again! An anarchists power dream.
The future is in mobile gaming, and those platforms are pretty much wide open to anyone.
The problem with mobile multiplayer gaming is that both to all four players have to have a smartphone. There are lots of people who don't feel the need for their own smartphone because the monthly bill for a smartphone is a lot more than the $7 per month for, say, Xbox Live Gold and MagicJack Plus. If they want to make a call, they use a POTS line, a VoIP line, or the cell phone of the head of household. So I agree with you that the future is in mobile gaming once the price of smartphone service in the United States falls below $20 per month (compared to about $10 per month for a dumbphone). But until then, the present is still in console gaming.
That and even among smartphone owners, next to nobody buys a gamepad.
Seriously, whoever thinks these large companies will shutdown their services for a whole day is drinking too much of the kool-aid. They would stand to lose a very large amount of money! (Except wikipedia, they would simply cease nagging people for donations for a day).
Here's a thought, why not take a fraction of the money they would stand to lose by shutting down their services for a day and pay the politicians more money than the movie/recording industry is paying them? Sure it doesn't give everyone the warm and fuzzies that such a protest would but that's just the way things work in this country for the time being.
Facebook and Google have great location information. Google has a decent telephony system.Maybe after a user is authenticated. They should add the information for the representative and senator for the user as well as an applet to call and email them.
Won't happen. Amazon give up their store front? Probably 10^6 $/min. Google strand their paying advertisers? I doubt it. Facebook have a DDoS from children without their toys? Really?
It's interesting to note the recent news of some well known companies, ie Nintendo, suddenly backing out from supporting the bill at the very last moment, right before its approved. It's the same as paying for the passing of the bill the entire time then right at the end, when money is no longer being collected for its passing, saying "we're not giving any more money to help the bill pass". I'm assuming this is a ruse to get everyone on both sides of the coins to like them. Sorry, Fail! I still don't like you companies for supporting it to begin with. Backing out at the last moment just make you look worse.
If it would cost them more than a few dollars of profit, then no way they would do such a thing. The board wouldn't allow it. The CEO wouldn't allow it to happen for frear of the board firing their ass for losing tens to hundreds of million of dollars in profits. All these companies probably secretly support the bill with briefcases full of money anyway.
Use the region codes in your browser to have all your Google searches return with the website of your Senator for those that support it.
Singular.
Amazon and Facebook combined, while may have popular awareness, Google is the only one with clout.
And by Clout I mean Lobbyist Currency, and by that I mean Cash. 10B/yr is a lot of politicians.
I mean if Google really doesn't want it, hell they could probably just buy it. Actually, it has been proposed before on Slashdot. Google could just skip the middle men politicians, they could effectively BUY the ENTIRE RIAA AND MPAA movie and recording industries, then just say they aren't interested is this new Act thing anymore.
Except a e-mail from some random shmuck isn't going to get the DA to go prosecute anyone. Really, what have you done to help the DA get his job?
You're kind of missing the point. There are tens of thousands of former communications majors working in other industries, from corporate marketing to waiting tables in Hollywood while waiting for their big break. There are more people out there who understand the concepts than there are jobs in the field—particularly if you limit yourself to jobs that actually pay well (which is why I double-majored in CS).
Even if only one percent of the people who tried their hand at content creation were good at it, there would still be more creative people working outside the industry than in it.
As for acting, lots of talent-free people try out for things, but that doesn't mean it's hard to find people with talent. Just go to a high school or college play, take notes about who is good, and ask them to act in your indy production. Been there, done that.
BTW, if you think 38 million dollars is a bare bones budget, you don't get it. That's actually above the Hollywood average (which is about $34 million, last I checked). There are many, many films by major studios that cost a fraction of that. $38 million is Hollywood low budget like low Earth orbit is a little too far to hit by batting a baseball.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
How about instead of these sites going completely black, that they just make it more difficult to access.
When you go to the site, it geo-locates you, and the closer you are to Washington DC, the longer a timer it sets. While you're waiting for the timer to time out, all you have to look at is information about SOPA. But then when the timer finishes, you get to access you page. And there's a way around this using a cookie or something for the tech-savvy of us.