SOPA Opponents May Go Nuclear
news.cnet.com
news.cnet.com
If Google and Facebook were to demonstrate that power once, on an issue that most of their users will agree with, the industry would get a lot more respect in D.C.
More seriously, Facebook alone doing a single-day blackout would be powerful. I guess its a question of how much money they'd be losing by doing it.
That said, it'd be in their best interest to stop this now, because even if this doesn't impact them, slowly but surely the laws will be amended to apply to everyone.
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/F?c112:1:./temp/~c112dI2...:
(a) Definition- For purposes of this section, a foreign Internet site or portion thereof is a `foreign infringing site' if--
(1) the Internet site or portion thereof is a U.S.-directed site and is used by users in the United States;
(2) the owner or operator of such Internet site is committing or facilitating the commission of criminal violations punishable under section 2318, 2319, 2319A, 2319B, or 2320, or chapter 90, of title 18, United States Code; and
(3) the Internet site would, by reason of acts described in paragraph (1), be subject to seizure in the United States in an action brought by the Attorney General if such site were a domestic Internet site.
`foreign infringing site' = "if such site were a domestic Internet site"
The only reasonable response to that is WTF.
I would imagine a two-phase approach: phase one would be the black-bar-type-doodle logo, phase two would be shutting things down. Whether phase two would happen would depend on how likely the bill is to pass, how well phase one went, and how much it would cost to police if it passed.
The Internet companies hold even much more power then traditional mass media. They just don't realize it.
most American voters will have forgotten
about it by then
An analogy would be a voter refusing to vote because representatives are not representing the voter. Self-reinforcing view (or exiology).
Are you meaning to endorse congress restricting or regulating such influence?
I'd see that as a far worse threat than SOPA. (Maybe you don't disagree.)
If such conservative influence against congress was regulated, then the reputation cost of such blackouts would rise a lot due to the perception that such interests are trying to influence congress. ergo, uneconomical to blackout.
It's lazy because the answer is so painfully obvious: we don't want corporates to have such strength. But they do. In fact, this is pretty much the only real way to have any lasting effect right now. So should we keep on a downward spiral out of some misplaced principle and poor understanding of what hypocrisy actually is or should we use the only tool potentially available to use to affect change?
Sometimes the best way to fight fire is with fire, sometimes the best way to weaken lobbying is through lobbying.
Keep in mind a company like Fox or Universal is in a position to offer them what amounts to free commercials on their networks. That is what this potential black out is competing against.
Update: I was unaware of this rule: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equal-time_rule. However, studios could still offer things like interviews for candidates that it doesn't offer to other candidates, which may not exactly be a commercial, but would have a similar effect.
No. Regardless of volume, for everyone who makes a fax/call/email, there are dozens or hundreds who still care but did not contact their representative. Instead, they vote against them later.
Whereas removal of functionality will irk uncaring users and may turn them against the SOPA opposition.
I'm still finding so many that are unaware about SOPA and upon understanding that it's far-reaching attempt to control the Internet, they're not SOPA opponents. However, the older generation doesn't quite get it until I mention restricting Radio stations (They were familiar with the Pirate Radio in past).
Unrelated to blackout, but the other big ISPs not forcing the filter on customers decided to police users for copyright infringement.
Such unrelenting copyright industry anti-Internet parasites.
In the long run though, dangerous move, as every politician alive in every(!) nation would start work on curtailing the obvious power in these companies hands demonstrated by such an event. but win? hell yes. no question.
Someone likened it with a "6k km meteor", aka world-killer, and that was probably spot on. On one hand I would love seing it, and think of how powerless all these politicians would feel, but fear indeed the results further down the line. politicians like power...
We should take the same approach here. Set a day, then gather as many companies and individuals as possible who will pledge to shut down their sites and replace them with anti-SOPA information and calls to action. Once momentum is established, then call out the big corporations and challenge them to stand up for their supposed values alongside the rest of the web. They will find this much more difficult to decline.
Individuals and small companies actually have the ability and willingness to act decisively according to real principles and moral values. It may be unfair for the little guys to shoulder the burden at first, but the sad truth is that if we don't, no one else will.
Nuclear would be: you vote for SOPA you will be blacklisted from ever using google, gmail, facebook, twitter, aws. Your campaign, personal, and business websites will never appear in google searches. Your books will never be sold on amazon. You will never be allowed to have a google account, upload videos to youtube, or own an android device.
That is nuclear.
There are a few times when you have to take a stand. This is one of them.
None of the airlines opposed the TSA like they should have, and I stopped flying american carriers as a result, except where there's literally no other option.
I won't have a problem ending all association with Google, Amazon, Facebook or Twitter.
Sure they could: just disallow any "unknown" encrypted communication. For example requiring the en/decryption to happen at the ISP or only allowing traffic they can decrypt and check.
(I'm not saying this is likely, but it could be implemented and most folks wouldn't care)
Not particularly serious. A little maybe.
Even then, it's impossible to prevent arbitrary communication. You can always hide your message inside of allowed messages (steganography), or an even more basic albeit inefficient technique: just use the timing between allowed messages to encode your hidden message.
You can't win a fight by threatening to beat the bully up tomorrow and the next day and the next day for taking your lunch money today. You have to win the fight now, before the damage is done.
Add in the additional problem that it is much easier to pass (or block) legislation before it passes than it is to repeal, and I don't think this strategy is viable. If it were, google and other companies could get together now and force the repeal of legislation already in place that is distasteful. How likely is that? On the other hand, the original nuclear strategy mentioned in the article would indubitably have an immediate and unbelievably tremendous impact. We're talking shock and awe here, folks. If google didn't work for a day, every voting person in America would know about it.
And that's the way they pass legislation that the majority of people wouldn't like if they knew the truth about it -- by sneaking it through because, frankly, most people are just too busy or too apathetic to not fall asleep when someone mentions the word "politics". The actual nuclear strategy mentioned in the article would certainly wake them up, and in a big way.
That said, unfortunately I doubt google or any other publicly traded company has the balls to do it.
In order to show you the highest quality results, we have omitted some entries.
If you like, you can repeat the search with the omitted results included.Even though such an approach may have plenty of support, especially in our communities, I wonder if it wouldn't turn off non-technical moderates in a much bigger way.
I hate to be the one to tell you this, but the attempt happened a long time ago, and it was completely successful.
There is also precedent for something like this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_World_Wide_Web_protest
So I think that example is irrelevant in almost every way.
(As to whether congress was taken over by industry; of course I agree with you. I'm not in favour of SOPA, after all. I'm just wargaming the potential scenario of a protest like this today.)
The problem with some of these things is, after a while, a universal assumption is developed: the assumption that people must know what you're talking about now.
Ask anyone about SOPA and they might now and be concerned, they might not. Ask someone about the act that has the real possibility of infringing on civil liberties in the name of corporate power, and you might get an open ear. You might not, or you might find someone who actually knows it but not by name.
It's like any *-gate scandal. Until it's historical fact, where you learn about it in reverse (what happened, to how it happened), you're not going to know about it unless you followed it from the start or read up.
Of course, the solution is to raise awareness as best you can, and educate people. Write to a tech blog or site and you're preaching to the choir; do that, or something more drastic, on a site focussed on an entirely unrelated demographic, and you might just get a few more people on your side. If you're Google or Facebook, then this could be the best gauge of consumer influence you can get.
But the timeline won't be "1. Internet blackout 2. SOPA defeated 3. Congress wipes out the entire computer industry next year". What this does is put them on the board, with all that implies, it's not a suicide move.
But then, the whole point of SOPA is that they are on the board whether they want to be or not, and while they are flattering themselves with their moral purity and pretending they aren't players, all the other players are checkmating them. What this move would change is not the nature of the game, merely the other player's perceptions of the power of the computer industry players.
I suspect that it is effectively inevitable this blackout will occur. It will work. And then we'll have a couple of years of breathing room to work with before the computer industry is coopted and they become part of the machine.
(Sidenote: Note barrkel said would be perceived as, not is. Not the same thing.)
(disclaimer, I'm neither a communicant nor a native speaker; but you get the idea, there's a way to spin the black screen explanation in such a way that it's hard to counter-spin).
As distinct from SOPA itself, which is an attempted takeover of the democratic process by industry.
The only difference from business as usual is that this time, Big Media picked a fight with people who can and will fight back. Hopefully in doing so, they have undermined their lobbying efforts irretrievably and will never regain the undue influence over legal policy they seem to have drummed up in recent years.
In that sense, any industry going on strike could be perceived in the same way.
That pretty much sums up SOPA and PIPA too.
The latter option would truly be "nuclear", but would Google/Facebook/et al put up with a day without those ad revenues? Would it be worth the loss in the long run?
[Edit] I meant targeting the reps that are voting for SOPA, not against it.
Would it really damage advertising revenues that much? If the fear is that Google would be hit by large lawsuits from some twelve year old posting a music video on YouTube, or that Facebook would be liable for a link to it, I expect that media conglomerates would be happy to give de facto immunity, so long as Google or whoever is willing to put Viacom's commissars in charge of which content is allowed and which isn't.
Obviously it's good that Google is on the side of angels on this, but if it's actually in their best interest is a relevant angle for analysis. It also would tell us how hard they're actually willing to fight to block SOPA.
There's a big problem with patent trolls right now making totally frivolous claims based on patents that they bought up, right? And yet many companies are paying oodles of dollars to pay them off and to try to avoid future trouble from essentially ridiculous patents. I would expect exactly the same thing to arise under SOPA, but with ridiculous copyright claims instead of ridiculous patents. Entities with no actual concern about their IP will start knocking at the door looking for shakedown money when it allegedly gets posted on Youtube.
SOPA would dramatically (and negatively) reshape the environment in which new services and business are developed (by startups, individuals, teams within larger companies, etc.). In the long run, that will matter more for the bottom line than anything else.
I don't think they're gonna do it. I think they're gonna choose a subtler strategy.
The thing here is that nuclear is actually a poor metaphor. Because it would imply that the menace of Google, Amazon etc. doing something similar to what Tumblr did would be enough. It's not. Politicians don't understand the web, that's why they want SOPA. They surely did not understand nuclear weapons before a few of them had tragically been used.
That said, I also think that it would be preferable that big internet companies do not get to do what is described in the story. But not for the same reason as you seem to think. Here is my sweet dream: What I would like is for people to go on strike and to get down in the streets until SOPA is dead. Because that way politicians and all those who/which are backing SOPA knows what the web is capable of, without the web needing big private companies to back people up. Because some companies may be on the web's side for now, but everybody should keep in mind that these are companies, which mainly want/need to make profit. For this fight and for now the interests are the same so it's okay to use them as objective allies. It's never okay to really depend on them.
What this really is, is legalization of asymmetric warfare, and while a minority of tech/content companies might prefer things the way they are, they'll prosper just fine after SOPA is passed. This will only ever existentially affect the small.
Who is John Galt?
my bet - the bill would be be dead within days, they have no obligation to service SOPA supporters.
Is there a compelling reason they couldn't do this or that it wouldn't work?
Which is an occasion for more creative thinking. The most important point, which the article mentions, is that Google et al have a direct relationship with users, and goodwill.
It needs to speak to users in non-strident tones, and engage on a level that users might care about. In turn, it must engage those users to do something that politicos will actually fear.
Perhaps something like “click here and Google will donate $1 to [politician’s rival]”. Or, Google simply gives $1 to an effective organization for every unique SOPA search.
I know there is a pro-SOPA commerical going around, but given that I've only seen it aired once, it doesn't seem
Bonus points if someone points to all infringing content on members of Congress sites, a la the recent Congressional torrent torrent.
I have a hard time seeing Google in particular starting a nuclear war over this. They value relationships with big content providers and have done a lot to build them. If a drastic action leads content providers to pull out of YouTube, Google Music, Google TV, etc., it would hurt Google quite a bit. Users care a lot less about YouTube than they care about what they can watch on YouTube, and the most popular videos are "official" music videos.
It is rare that huge consumer companies allow legislative fights to spill over and impact their core business. It usually just annoys customers rather than generating any sort of meaningful grassroots bump.
Regarding annoying of customers - when fascism was on the rise in Germany, lot of people should have been annoyed but they were left in ignorance, and that's why eventually Hitler succeeded in the takeover, before turning the country to ashes.
When your government breaks the law, and then under the disguise of copyright infringement they take down any website that reports about it, the last working piece of the responsibility feedback loop is completely destroyed, the citizen is fucked, and the country eventually ends in ashes. That is the true danger of SOPA, and that is what SOPA is all about.
I do like the idea of PR hype surrounding the threat of blackout though. Just publicizing the potential threat of the 'nuclear option' in the press for a week should be enough to get congress to back off.