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Internet Defense League: A Bat Signal For the Internet

Posted by samzenpus on from the immediate-blackout dept.

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.'"

6 of 101 comments (clear)

  1. Unfortunate choice of name... by EdgePenguin · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.

    1. Re:Unfortunate choice of name... by penix1 · · Score: 4, Informative

      Naming conventions aside, petition campaigns, especially form petition types have never worked in the past. They require the receiving party to actually give a shit about the petitions and set aside their own self interest and those of the ones funding them. Blackouts and demonstrations of the proposed nasty are far more effective. And it needs to be the big boys doing it first. That would be Google, Facebook, Twitter and Wikipedia. that is what stopped SOPA. Not some silly form sent to individual representatives. It prompted Joe Blow to actually call and write DIRECTLY to their reps expressing in their own words how they feel. That is way more effective than getting the same form over and over again. And even then, there will be politicians that won't set aside that self interest.

      --
      This is a sig. This is only a sig. Had this been an actual sig you would have been informed where to tune for more sigs.
  2. needs technical measures by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  3. summary is wrong (surprise) by million_monkeys · · Score: 5, Informative

    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

  4. misleading summary by Cyko_01 · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

  5. the internet does not live in the ether by circletimessquare · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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