It amazes me how many commenters here seem to be missing the point. The point is not to take these sites offline in a kind of "do what we want or you can't have our services" move, but to bring the issue to the attention of everyone who is unaware that this may affect them. These sites have the eyes of millions of americans who are completely unaware of the SOPA threat and turning the sites off for a day, or even sho…
Yes, and at that point it can become an election issue, and then it can be defeated.
When I read about this "Nuclear Option", I can't help but feel that it is nothing more than a PR ploy. How much money would be lost by companies like Amazon, Google, etc. by shutting their sites down for even a single day? Even more, this sort of stunt would be a Customer support nightmare for any of these companies. Though an interesting threat, it comes off as completely impractical from every angle.
Plus they obviously wont pull down paid services like google apps or AWS, etc.
I understand the negative response to calling this a "Nuclear Option", but I don't understand everyone's negative reaction to the idea. How many 12 - 17 year old kids have any idea what SOPA is? If for the next two weeks all they saw was a "simulated SOPA" on facebook and google, how many do you think would complain to mom and dad? I'm sure plenty of kids of wealthy people have gotten things changed just in the name…
Education is required before a boycott could possibly be effective. As it stands, a boycott would amount to a headline resembling:
"Hacker News Boycotts Media over SOPA." When questioned, [media exec] responded "We didn't Notice a thing - as a matter of fact, sales were up for the week. Who the hell is Hacker News? Sounds like the group of pirates we're trying to protect ourselves from."
Once everyone understands what SOPA actually is and how it could affect them, a boycott would make sense.
I, for one, would love to see a day (1) without Google. Almost like a moment of silence to realize how far the internet has come since '96. Would bing suddenly gain mass users? Would we rediscover dogpile?
I was disappointed when Time magazine named "the Protester" person of the year for 2011. A blackout of major web services would amount to little more than a stunt. Sure, the mainstream media will run the story for the first day...but for how long will these services remain willfully unavailable? Who will cave in first and go back online without resolution? It seems to me that the popularity of activism and protesting…
I'd be happy if they just had a Tumblr-like widget to call your representative at the top of the page.
I was disappointed when Time magazine named "the Protester" person of the year for 2011. A blackout of major web services would amount to little more than a stunt. Sure, the mainstream media will run the story for the first day...but for how long will these services remain willfully unavailable? Who will cave in first and go back online without resolution? It seems to me that the popularity of activism and protesting…
"It seems to me that the popularity of activism and protesting do little to affect change, whereas more commonly yes than no they simply represent an inconvenience to everyone else who can't be bothered with another struggle/burden in their lives. There must be more mature and effective means of defeating SOPA than having a group of web services throwing a temper tantrum."
It seems that way to you, but it is false. If it weren't for activism and protesting we'd be living in a situation where only rich white males from certain families have any rights and everyone is a slave or near-slave. You know, how the country started working before blacks, women, labor, etc. activists started making noise.
Your approach means everyone turns into slaves again.
It amazes me how many commenters here seem to be missing the point. The point is not to take these sites offline in a kind of "do what we want or you can't have our services" move, but to bring the issue to the attention of everyone who is unaware that this may affect them. These sites have the eyes of millions of americans who are completely unaware of the SOPA threat and turning the sites off for a day, or even sho…
Do I think that SOPA and PIPA (please don't forget about mentioning PIPA - Google, Facebook, etc!) are so bad that a complete blackout would be appropriate? Yes, I do.
But I also think that a call to action is even more important, so hopefully they don't just go offline, but present the visitors with an overlay or a widget or something to call their representatives, and with some clear explanation in layman terms of what SOPA and PIPA do.
It amazes me how many commenters here seem to be missing the point. The point is not to take these sites offline in a kind of "do what we want or you can't have our services" move, but to bring the issue to the attention of everyone who is unaware that this may affect them. These sites have the eyes of millions of americans who are completely unaware of the SOPA threat and turning the sites off for a day, or even sho…
I think deliberately "missing the point" in this case is part of their propaganda strategy.
When I read about this "Nuclear Option", I can't help but feel that it is nothing more than a PR ploy. How much money would be lost by companies like Amazon, Google, etc. by shutting their sites down for even a single day? Even more, this sort of stunt would be a Customer support nightmare for any of these companies. Though an interesting threat, it comes off as completely impractical from every angle.
Plus they obviously wont pull down paid services like google apps or AWS, etc.
But why not? I mean if this bill is really passing, like everyone claims, then where is the official information on how the actual language of the bill "changes the internet " as we know it.. I hate SOPA but it does not seem like anybody is doing anything to really stop it. I mean Google, Facebook, etc should stop all activity, shut down for a month and use all its resources to fight this thing with speeches, commercials, cold calling, blah , blah, blah.. If nobody does that then they really don't care or this bill is not as bad as they (Google,FB,etc) say it is.
FWIW, OpenDNS will not ever shut down our service and I doubt most of those other sites will either.
I keep seeing this "nuclear option" story and it's annoying. We will keep fighting against SOPA, but we won't shut down our service in protest, that would be far worse (and not effective).