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Wikipedia Still Set For Full Blackout Wednesday
symbolset writes "Jimmy Wales confirms that the entire English language Wikipedia will be on blackout January 18th from midnight to midnight, Eastern Standard Time. The site's 25 million daily users will redirected to an education page with a call to action. Votes are still being taken on the exact implementation."
Despite a small victory against SOPA in the House, Wikipedia still feels the blackout is necessary due to the looming Senate vote on PROTECT IP, and as a deterrent to future attempts to revive a similar law under a new name.
Shut it down for a week and you'll be able to almost hear the roar of a billion college students having their term papers failed!
Sorry, I couldn't resist.
Theyll try to buy a new law when the dust settles. the only way to fix this, is to go on constant offensive, and buy lawmakers and laws FOR the internet, and to prevent content industry from buying laws AGAINST it.
Read radical news here
Don't think so. Beginning at 04:50 AM, thousands of millions of people (mostly students) will be reloading the Wikipedia main page at a rate of 60 times per minute, 25 million people. Kind of Slashdot effect!
The primary reason for creating SOPA and PIPA is to get around the pesky inconvenience of having to deal with all those other countries and their own sets of laws. Because the US controls .com, .net, and .org as well as having both IANA and ICANN, big media could simply use the courts they have bought here in the US without having to deal with that annoying inconvenience of other sovereign nations and their own sets of laws.
I suppose now Murdoch will accuse Wikipedia of being a "piracy leader" along with Google. After all, Wikipedia just serves up other people's content and takes money (what they call "donations") for it.
Politicians, welcome, I would like you to meet reality. His name is the Sheep With Gun and he is going on strike.
Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to eat for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote.
I'm going to start printing out Wikipedia today.
I figure I'll be done by Tuesday night.
If anyone needs something looked up on Wednesday, give me a call.
Wouldn't mind them helping with awareness of the RWA, where publishers are basically trying to make public access policies illegal. Read more here.
Belief is the currency of delusion.
Probably been posted already on a prior thread, but if you want to support the blackout on your website, blog, twitter, facebook, etc. there is useful info here.
"We make our world significant by the courage of our questions and by the depth of our answers." Carl Sagan
that's why google, amazon et al need to do it.
Read radical news here
We also noted that roughly 55% of those supporting a blackout preferred that it be a global one, with many pointing to concerns about similar legislation in other nations. For example, one British editor stated "American law is America's business, but law that affects Wikipedia worldwide is an issue of worldwide interest", a principle we felt had considerable support.
Our culture doesn't get smarter, it just finds new ways of being retarded.
A better one....
This is exactly how much content will be left when every publisher and celebrity makes up a reason to force Wikipedia to take down their pages.
Wikipedia has cleaned up its copyright problems... But it could never have been created in the enviroent about to be unleashed.
Maybe that is the argument to make:
List every large tech company that violated the hell out of IP laws they want to impose on everybody else. Microsoft, Cisco, Apple, etc could all have been kicked off the Internet (if we had the Internet) when they were "growing up".
With all the sites going dark tomorrow, my work production will see a marked rise.
Indeed - if the laws in the US attack US sites that have a global audience, we already have a vested interest. When those laws seek to punish sites outside the US, even more so. We also live in a world where alleged copyright infringers are now being extradited to the US for trial - nobody who lives in a country with a US extradition treaty is safe from this garbage or should stand idly by (and certainly nobody has the right to complain that a free site will be offline for a single day when the cause is so laudable).
That's a lot of time where I could have been deleting other people's efforts. :(
- A Proud Wikipedia Editor
I haven't given any money to Wikipedia in a long time. This seems like a good opportunity to catch up on my donations. I figure to do it while the blackout is in progress, if the donation page is up, or right after if they have donations blacked out.
It is easy to find examples of people getting paid to do things that harm society. Here's a chance to pay a company, which has earned the money, for doing the right thing. They even make the first show of good faith -- every day -- by existing, not charging, and not accepting advertisements.
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
If not, please consider it.
No, a few clicks through of inconvenience won't convince users just how bad the situation is.
They need to be given a "taste" of post-SOPA life to truly understand it.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
You can take out your anger on me. I'm one of the Wikipedians who said Strong Support for a hard global blackout. I'm sorry that you're inconvenienced, but THAT'S THE POINT.
Steve Magruder, Metro Foodist
Uh, where are you getting your history?
The East India Tea company didn't say "Raise taxes on tea". It was big government (King George), who wanted to pay for British programs on the backs of the American colonies... something the Americans had no say in due to the turn around time in sending representatives.
The rich evil corporations are at the mercy of the public. They must convince you to give them your money, unlike the Government that can take it by gunpoint. Don't believe me? Ask Verizon how that $2 "Pay my bill fee" went? Or Ask Netflix about how splitting and dumping the DVD-by-mail service went? Or Bank of America's Debit-card fees went? Did we have to pass laws, change government, or even our evil capitalist ways to make these changes? No. We just said "if you do that, we will take our business elsewhere... and that is the power of capitalism. If you lose your customer base, you lose capital. You lose capital, you lose your business. No "To big to fail" BS. No bailouts. Keep customers happy, and they will reward you. Screw them over, and you will find your behind on the curb. That is how the system should work.
if (it != oneThing) it = another;
Many countries, including the U.S., have signed the ACTA treaty - the source and inspiration for SOPA/PIPA. So if there is a global symbol of the attempt to censor the Internet, it is the ACTA treaty. The US has already signed this and is using various, mostly economic, means to pressure other countries to sign as well. The U.S. administration needs to stop pushing ACTA on to other countries and repudiate it for the attack on freedom that it is.
I've said it before and I'll say it again. When groups like Wikipedia and Google and Facebook and Twitter all go on to do this blackout thing, all arguments in favor of the people go out the window, because it becomes an industry vs industry battle. Even though we the people and the aforementioned groups are opposed to SOPA/PIPA, we are not on the same side - they have their own interests, and while some of them may or may not coincide with ours, our own interests are not being represented when they do this.
When the blackout happens, the government will just see it as a battle between the industries, and it will render the lay peoples' arguments inaudible. If PIPA gets shut down as a reaction to Wikipedia et al, it will be seen as a victory for them, not a victory for us. We will celebrate, sure, but the government and supporters won't be any closer to understanding the part we played and how drastically it would have affected us on a fundamental level had it passed; they'll be just as tempted to introduce new legislation later on until they eventually get their way. Remember, corporations and industries aren't afraid of each other, they are afraid of informed voters.
As for the "educational" prospect of what Wikipedia et al are doing, convincing people who don't understand what's going on into rallying against SOPA/PIPA just by shutting down important websites is not really a fair tactic, and they won't be educated so much as enraged and desperate to reach any solution that would bring it back. You could shut down Facebook and put a message on there that people need to run through the streets naked to bring it back, and the United States would become a nudist nation overnight. While education is certainly important, we need to educate each other with fair and open discussion and debate, not with scare tactics from groups which have their own separate interests in mind. That's not to say that the information Wikipedia and others will post isn't going to be accurate or true, or that the information and commercials being fed to the public by SOPA/PIPA supporters isn't a load of bunk, but all of that can be posted on these websites without actually shutting down the services - the blackouts themselves are specifically designed to elicit an emotional response, not a rational one, and that's not the kind of tactic we want to employ or endorse.
While it's nice to have some big name support, this is our battle which we need to win on our own, and we should really encourage Wikipedia and others not to go through with this blackout plan.
Well, actually
Citizens United became a front group for giant corporations, both within and without the United States when our Supreme Court decided, as Mitt Romney said, "Corporations are people, too." And thus, they have a right to free speech. And that right ought not to be abridged, especially in politics (except we do abridge individuals right of freedom of speech by calling it a "verbal act.").
This is wholesale misuse of the 14th Amendment, which was actually written to give persons of African and non-European ancestry full citizenship in the US. It has been interpreted by people who ought to have their heads examined as "Corporations are people, too and, because there are more people, they are deserving of extra protection.
Of course, in their infinite wisdom, our Supreme Court did not consider the fact that many big Corporations are multinational now and, since they are permitted to use any amount of their money for "free speech," much of that money can come from overseas.
Which suggests, for example, that Ron Paul's SuperPAC is actually run by Iran, who would really like for the United States to be ultra-isolationist. I'm not in possession of any certain knowledge that it is, but since there are no laws requiring any reporting and since Ron Paul did vote to prevent any reporting, this makes him suspect.
So Citizens United might have initially been a well-intentioned group, but it has morphed into the single worse Supreme Court Decision in this country since the Dred Scott Case.
Gods don't kill people, people with gods kill people.
"Best yet, it would make it nearly impossible for the MSM to ignore the blackout/SOPA/PIPA. Then watch as they tiptoe around the elephant in the living room: why they haven't been covering SOPA/PIPA up until this point."
Hey everyone, between the post above and the slightly typo'ed article below, they just told us how to really beat these bills.
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal/2012_01/putting_sopa_on_a_shelf034765.php
Key quote:
"The legislation ran into an even more significant problem yesterday when the White House announced its opposition to the bills. ... ...
Until now, the Obama administration had not taken a position on the issue.
Though the administration did not issue a formal veto threat, the White Houseâ(TM)s opposition signaled the end of these bills, at least in their current form."
So (sorta) forget your fifth-grade teacher's advice to write to congress. (Mods, that's rhetoric, not literal.) Though the exact timing is a little fuzzy, here's how it really worked:
1. Mainstream Media ignores the issue, because the bill is in its favor.
2. Grassroots movement to excite the Big Players.
3. Big Players excite the general public.
4. Listen to what the President is *not saying*.
5. Tell the *President* (via staff etc) that *he or his party* will not get re-elected if he signs the bill!
6. President issues veto threat. MainStream Media *has to report on the President* (usually!)
7. Bill dies because it's a dare that it would require an Over-ride.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Will slashdot join this protest?