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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.'"
In the UK this is going to be reminiscent, for a lot of people, of the English Defence League - a bunch of neo-nazi football hooligans who stage rallies against 'Islamists' in English town centres, as a shallow pretext to harass and attack people with dark skin.
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.
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.
it isn't called "League of the Extraordinary Websites".
for "League of Self-Important Angry Young Men."
And thanks, I'll pass...
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.
I think the summary is wrong about how the system is supposed to work. From the actual IDF site: "First, sign up. If you have a website, we'll send you sample alert code to get working in advance. The next time there's an emergency, we'll tell you and send new code. Then it's your decision to pull the trigger."
Sounds like they give you a sample code in advance so you can make it fit with your site, then if something comes up, they send you a version specific to whatever the issue is. If you don't think it's important, you can just ignore it. If you do want to include a message, you can pop it on your site. And it shouldn't screw anything up because you've previously tested/customized the code for your site. That's slightly (completely?) different than the summary which implies they give you code allowing them to automatically add alerts to your site whenever they want.
I'm still not convinced it's worthwhile, but it's not the "no way in hell I'm doing that" method that the summary describes
This is not a piece of code that you put on your site and they flip the switch for you whenever they feel like it (although that is an option too if you really don't care). They basically send you an email about the current threat and YOU flip the switch if you want to participate. The code is just so that everybody's banners look the same.
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
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
You know, not a single site I went to on "SOPA day" actually blacked out. Wikipedia put a lame ass banner frame that could be circumvented by pressing escape soon after the page loaded, and that was about the most aggressive I saw.
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.