

Flickr goes creative for SOPA blackout - rometest
http://techcrunch.com/2012/01/18/flickr-joins-sopa-protest-lets-users-black-out-photos/

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mcherm
The approach is particularly creative: drive home the feeling of censorship by
allowing some users to "censor" other users.

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artursapek
I wish they had followed through strongly on this. There's a hard-to-miss link
that lets you opt-out of having your photos censored, and if you're visiting a
blacked-out photo flickr gives the anti-PIPA spiel and presents a button to
"show it anyway." If they were trying to demonstrate what SOPA/PIPA would make
the internet like, shouldn't they just bite the bullet and make these photo
black-outs permanent for a day? The idea is great but its implementation is
pretty weak, it won't actually get people worked up.

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smackfu
You better not darken my photos if I'm paying for the service.

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deanproxy
Just think how you'll feel if the SOPA or PIPA bills pass and there is no
"Show my website anyway" button... 'Cause you can say that all you want, but
if one of these bills pass and if the idiots deem it necessary, your content
will get "darkened" regardless of how much money you paid to host it somewhere
(maybe not the same way flickr is doing it, but still... to the same point).

I think everyones photos shouldn't be exempt, including the whitehouse photos!
This is just a small taste of what is possible.

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smackfu
It certainly highlights one downside of using a paid-for shared service over
your own self-hosted version. Flickr could be blocked due to another user,
whereas my own hosting can only be blocked due to me

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brlewis
If an accuser makes a mistake and you're unreachable for 5 days, your own
self-hosted version could be blocked.

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brlewis
"Update 9:27am January 18, 2012: We removed the 10 limit, you can darken to
your dark heart’s dark desire."

<http://blog.flickr.net/en/2012/01/18/pipa-sopa/>

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ggchappell
All these positive comments are surprising. I find this to be a very bad idea.
Flickr is a service (unlike HN) that some people depend on, and that some
people _pay for_. So Flickr is saying that, even if I pay for their service,
they might deny it to me, at the whims of other users?

Flickr is showing themselves to be untrustworthy -- and possibly in breach of
contract. I would suggest not relying on them.

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khwang
Isn't there an opt-out mechanism so that your photos won't be darkened? I
assume they put this in here because there are professional photographers on
the site.

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ggchappell
Well, that's nice. But still, having told them I want a service, and having
paid for it, I am now required to notify them that I still want to get the
service that I already paid them for?

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mikeash
These sites believe that they face an existential crisis due to this proposed
legislation. Slightly impacting the service today to save it for the long term
is clearly worth the tradeoff, if it's necessary.

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ggchappell
Well, I guess a number of people disagree with me. And I can accept that
(although I still disagree). But I think I should point out that "worth the
tradeoff" is not the issue I'm talking about. For example, suppose I pay for
something at a store, but the store refuses to give it to me, because they're
protesting something. We can certainly ask whether the store's policy is
"worth the tradeoff", but is that really the question we _should_ be asking?

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chc
But that's not at all like the situation at hand. They're not refusing
anything — it's only for one day, and if you don't want to participate, you
don't have to. What you are complaining about is a minor inconvenience at
worst.

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maurits
To bad the Whitehouse photo-stream is exempted.

<http://www.flickr.com/photos/whitehouse/>

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ascuttlefish
The photos are darkened for me.

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evan_
Must've been a temporary mistake. The whitehouse's flickr account is
definitely opted-out. None of their photos are darkened.

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unfasten
At least all the photos on the first page of the photostream are darkened for
me. Here's a screenshot of the first picture:
[http://dl.dropbox.com/u/24903613/ss/flickr-whitehouse-
sopa.p...](http://dl.dropbox.com/u/24903613/ss/flickr-whitehouse-sopa.png)

Are you located outside the U.S.? It could also be possible that it changed in
the last few hours.

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rbanffy
My biggest complaint is that it's not easy to automate blacking out every
photo of every SOPA supporter.

It is, but it involves YQL, API keys and more time than I want to dedicate.

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akadien
I like this feature.

I changed my Gravatar, g+, and FB images to black squares today to solicit
whys from my networks.

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ceejayoz
The wording on this was confusing enough that I thought Flickr was claiming
I'd opted-in to black out my photos.

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maeon3
We are no doubt pissing off Congress to no end. I wonder what the approval
rating of Congress will become after this stunt? 5%? 2%?

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jarek
Do you really think 95% of the population either already disapproves of the
Congress or has been on the internet today and ran into a darkened site and
thought about the issue?

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Natsu
Congressional support is something like 13.3% with 83% disapproval.

[http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/other/congressional_...](http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/other/congressional_job_approval-903.html)

HuffPo has a funny take on that, saying that more people approve of "Porn,
Polygamy, BP Oil Spill, 'U.S. Going Communist'" than of Congress.

So no it's probably not unreasonable to suppose that somewhat less than half
(12/27) of the ~27% people who approve of or are neutral to Congress saw a
darkened site and thought about the issue. I know that I got questioned about
it at work by the less technical folks.

