Internet Defense League: A Bat Signal For the Internet

mikejuk writes "Following the successful defense of the Internet against SOPA, website owners are being invited to sign up to a project that will enable them to participate in future protest campaign, the Internet Defense League. The banner logo for the 'bat-signal' site is a cat, a reference to Ethan Zuckerman's cute cat theory of digital activism. The idea is that sites would respond to the call to "defend the Internet" by joining a group blackout or getting users to sign petitions. From the article: 'Website owners can sign up on the IDL website to add a bit of code to their sites (or receive code by email at the time of a campaign) that can be triggered in the case of a crisis like SOPA. This would add an "activist call-to-action" to all participating sites - such as a banner asking users to sign petitions, or in extreme cases blackout the site, as proved effective in the SOPA/PIPA protest of January 2012.'"

Comments

needs technical measures

[Anonymous Coward]

The internet really needs better built in, automatic, technical measures to protect anonymity and protect against censorship.

End to end encryption as standard for everything. Censorship resistant technologies.

We can try to defend it against legal attacks, but those attacks only have to succeed ONCE, where the defence has to succeed EVERY time. I don't know exactly how and of course there will be many problems to solve, but I think technical measures are the only thing that can protect the internet in the long run. We must ensure that politicians and legal systems simply do not have the ability to damage it. of course that cannot be done in a perfect way, but that doesn't mean that moving in that direction is without use.

Um, No?

[WrongSizeGlass]

Website owners can sign up on the IDL website to add a bit of code to their sites (or receive code by email at the time of a campaign) that can be triggered in the case of a crisis like SOPA. This would add an "activist call-to-action" to all participating sites - such as a banner asking users to sign petitions, or in extreme cases blackout the site, as proved effective in the SOPA/PIPA protest of January 2012.

Are they nuts? I don't want any outside site having control over my clients' sites. If they are hacked this would give the hackers a quick way to affect any site that signs up with them.

Well intentioned (I hope), but count me out.

the internet does not live in the ether

[circletimessquare]

cables can be cut, power can be switched off, frequencies can be jammed

the health of the internet is merely a reflection of the health of society. so focus your efforts on the keeping society's attitude healthy. that's your best, and only defense, to keeping the internet truly free

there is no such thing as a technical fix to a sociological problem

Re:the internet does not live in the ether

[Anonymous Coward]

cables can be cut, power can be switched off, frequencies can be jammed

True, yes, but not without getting the masses up in arms.

Right now, it's too abstract. "So WHAT if every single keystroke I type, every site I visit, is logged by my government? I'm not doing anything wrong!" Outside of a tiny minority, people don't care.

But take away their internet by cutting the cable, and they WILL care. Governments generally can't do that. They CAN engage in censorship and widespread surveillance without getting the population up in arms though, which is why technical measures against those things are needed.

newsflash

[Swampash]

Governments, particularly that of the United States, do not give a shit if you black out your website or put a passive-aggressive post-it note at the top of each page. SOPA got killed because a bunch of multinational megacorps that spend millions on lobbying collectively had a quiet word with their "clients".

Just kidding, it was probably that thing on petitiononline.com, no, really it was.

I'm afraid that persistence wins

[utkonos]

And the internet will lose eventually.

The problem boils down to attention span. The SOPA/PIPA protest was something new. The threat was very in-your-face. It was easy to get the internet to pay attention for these reasons. Congress has learned from that mistake. The new bills are all going to end in the same situation, but they will be smaller and sneakier. The internet has already expended its attention span. It will be impossible to muster the same protest again, unfortunately.

Re:I'm afraid that persistence wins

[guises]

It's always a mistake to play a defensive game like this. It isn't enough to oppose bad laws, it's necessary to pass good ones that preclude further bad legislation. It's much harder to undermine a good law than it is to legislate something new.

So, in other words, we need to identify something positive and back that, or write our own. I've heard some good things about the OPEN act - the *AAs oppose it, for one thing, that's a solid win. It hasn't had a whole lot of press though.

Re:Unfortunate choice of name...

[mwvdlee]

Yes, there's assholes on all extremes of the social/political/religious spectrums (sprectra, spectri?).
The fact that there's asssholes on the other extreme doesn't make you less of an asshole.