
With Today's Protests, SOPA Becomes a Mainstream Issue - johnpaultitlow
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/sopa_awareness_goes_mainstream.php#.TxcEvwx9Sco.hackernews
======
ktsmith
Unfortunately while this is becoming a mainstream issue many news agencies are
framing this as tech companies being pro-piracy. Much more unfortunately many
people aren't even bothering to read the pages that are blacked out today to
understand why the blackout is occurring. Looking at everything being
retweeted at the below URL is a good example of this:

<https://twitter.com/herpderpedia>

~~~
mindcrime
That link is destroying my faith in mankind. I mean, seriously... I try not to
be that person that walks around talking about how "the average American is
about as smart as a bucket of rocks" or whatever. I generally try to be an
optimist and assume that people are mostly capable and competent, albeit prone
to the occasional fit of stupidity.

But reading those tweets (assuming they're all real, and that most of them
were not written to be sarcastic), it's hard not to think "are all of these
people f%!#ng stupid or what?" It says right on the Wikipedia blackout page
that it's a 24 hour thing, but half these tweets are like "OMG is Wikipedia
gone forever?!?"

WTF? Really? Can anybody read anymore? Does anybody _bother_ to read anymore?

<rant-over />

~~~
JonnieCache
This is not a feature of the american mind. People just don't like reading.

People _will not read anything!_ People are governed by laziness and habit,
because they are effective strategies. Modern technology only makes it worse.
Being a teenager makes it even worse, and living in the richest and most
'advanced' society in the world is probably the nail in the coffin.

Lots has been written on how you can't get people to read simple instructions.
That's why windows and it's cryptic dialog boxes and Yes/No questions caused
so much consternation for all those years, until apple forced them to sort it
out and start labelling the buttons with verbs. People might just read the
headline and the verbs, but they sure won't parse the whole paragraph and
decide whether they want to accept or decline the action as phrased.

The same thing goes for politics and it's obsession with soundbytes.

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thetrendycyborg
Today, my fiancee called me and asked: "This SOPA thing. I think it's bad. Is
it bad?" I hadn't mentioned it before, really. So it is definitely hitting the
mainstream.

This has rekindled my hope for humanity. I used to think most people are dumb.
But people are really willing to look at, think about, and act on pressing
issues, if you bring it up with them directly.

------
zackham
Here's the message I posted on my Facebook page if you want to copy it to
share with less technically aware friends:

\--

The largest coordinated online protest in the internet's history is going on
today, with the goal of stopping legislation that threatens the internet as we
know it. If you think the internet is pretty cool the way it is, take a few
minutes to click some of these links or at least share this post with others.

Good video explaining the bills, "SOPA" and "PIPA":
<http://vimeo.com/31100268>

An open letter written by "83 prominent Internet inventors and engineers",
strongly opposing these measures with excellent explanations:
[https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2011/12/internet-inventors-
war...](https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2011/12/internet-inventors-warn-against-
sopa-and-pipa)

Some of the larger sites protesting today, with more details and easy ways to
take action: <https://www.google.com/> <http://en.wikipedia.org/>
<http://eugene.craigslist.org/> (all craigslist sites)
<http://www.reddit.com/> <http://www.wired.com/> <http://wordpress.com/>
<http://www.mozilla.org/> <http://php.net/> <http://www.rackspace.com/>
<http://oreilly.com/> <http://boingboing.net/> <http://xkcd.com/>
<http://blog.flickr.net/en> <http://www.gnu.org/> <http://techcrunch.com/>
<http://imgur.com/> <http://www.newgrounds.com/>

~~~
zackham
Formatting is bad and HN isn't cooperating with post editing right now... here
is the actual FB post (it's public):

<http://www.facebook.com/zackham/posts/10100280245567546>

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rnernento
This is a key first step. Now that it has some real attention we have to work
to get the right information out there. At the very least people are going to
be curious, hopefully they'll be turning to nerds everywhere for an
explanation.

