
Web Giants Consider 'Nuclear Option' Blackout to Fight SOPA - SRSimko
http://www.talkincloud.com/web-giants-consider-nuclear-option-blackout-to-fight-sopa/
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axefrog
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 showing a "stop censorship" notice
will spread the awareness that previously was missing.

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nextparadigms
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.

~~~
tedkalaw
From the second paragraph:

"If these companies were to take this route, all of these sites would go
completely dark save for a message of opposition to SOPA censorship and
instructions on how to contact your local representative."

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nickolai
I dont like the term "nuclear option". The fact that there is no "mutually
assured destruction" if they follow-up with this makes this so called "nuclear
option" much less scary. Besides it is never been done before, so no one even
knows what would be the result.

Saying "Please stand by for a demonstration of relevancy" and doing it would
be way more effective

Speaking of "nuclear options", one of the reasons the bombs were dropped on
japan in WW2 instead of just sending an "or else!" telegram was that threats
would not have been taken seriously until the effect was confirmed - an there
were even some doubts on whether it will work at all as designed.
Unfortunately it did.

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jacques_chester
One theory for why two bombs were dropped was to intimidate Stalin into
thinking there was a production line of such weapons -- ergo, he should stay
out of western Europe.

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nasmorn
I always thought it was because little boy was made if uranium which japanese
intelligence had a pretty good idea of how much the US could produce in a
year. Fat man was based on the more readily available plutonium but the
detonation was more uncertain. Thus the test bomb produced by the manhattan
project was also a plutonium bomb trying out the implosion detonation
mechanism. Although never tested before the physics ov achieving
supercriticality for a uranium bomb where never in doubt.

~~~
jacques_chester
Thanks, I didn't know that. As usual it's probably a mix of factors.

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farinasa
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 of shutting them up.

Why hasn't anyone suggested boycotting the media industries? Perhaps I missed
it, but are we that materialistic to where no one even considered it? Stop
going to theaters, buying from iTunes, cancel netflix. You vote with your
dollars.

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enobrev
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.

* Fixed Typo.

~~~
farinasa
Education is required before a boycott could possibly be effective.

I understand this completely. A boycott isn't actually a boycott unless the
company knows why you are boycotting them, but that is what exactly I'm
suggesting. It shouldn't be in the name of anything i.e. "Hacker News". It
should be a movement for citizens, by citizens. SOPA is a huge violation of
constitutional rights and that should be all the reason needed to initiate a
boycott.

Instead of a black out, perhaps every other page load will display an
"educational" message for five minutes. Business continues but it's annoying
enough to be effective. I'm also not suggesting that google or facebook
encourage a boycott as that is just asking for trouble. That's why it needs to
be a "civil rights" movement.

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nestlequ1k
All these services have huge audiences. Audiences that money can't buy.

Every one of these services should have a splash page that every user sees at
least once. It should explain in simple terms, what SOPA is, why it is on the
verge of wrecking the US internet economy.

Time is running out. If these services don't act, they'll eventually be taken
down by the political class who can't stand the fact that their power has
diminished by the next wave of technology.

No one needs to black out anything, or "go nuclear". Just spread awareness.
ASAP

~~~
artichokeheart
This is what I don't understand. Are these companies so short-sited that they
cannot see the potential of their own user base as a massive lobbying arm? Do
they secretly support SOPA?

If the main stream media was threatened with a similar type of legislation
they would mount an non-stop campaign through their editorials and choice of
headlining stories so that their audience was aware of what was happening and
how bad the legislation was. This is the reason Rupert Murdoch has so much
power.

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tsantero
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 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.

~~~
shadowfiend
“It seems to me that the popularity of activism and protesting do little to
affect change…”

What makes you think that? Most major shifts begin with activism and protests.
These are the ways that the populace makes their voice heard in large masses,
much like lobbying is typically the way corporations have theirs heard.
Sometimes protests go unheeded, and sometimes this leads to revolutions. Other
times, the protesters disband without having achieved anything. The protester
was named person of the year for 2011 because of the clear effects that
protesters _did_ have in 2011—from the Middle East to Europe. The true effects
have even been felt here, in the form of the Tea Party, though that was before
2011. Occupy has had less success in achieving concrete change, but plenty of
success in achieving shifts in the media narrative.

Moreover, what is immature about this? A temper tantrum? What makes you call
this a temper tantrum? Temper tantrums are, by definition, uncontrolled. This
is an extremely controlled and planned response. This is law we're talking
about. A law that threatens these businesses, and, through them, their
customers. But most of their customers have no idea this law is even in the
works, or don't really get how it could affect them. What better way is there
of telling them the effect beyond... Well... Telling them?

In a functioning representative democracy, there can be no more effective
means to defeating a law than informing the public and getting the public to
contact their representatives and inform them that there is a problem en
masse. This is a means to achieve that.

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gersh
In 1996, many websites turned black to protest the community decency act. It
was passed but invalidated by the supreme court. See
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_World_Wide_Web_protest>. Far fewer people
were on the internet then, so today, something like that would have a far
bigger impact.

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JoshTriplett
I keep seeing talk about this, but it never seems to go beyond talk. It
doesn't seem necessary to disable services entirely to get people's attention.
Just adding a banner or link would have a _huge_ impact. Consider the impact
of adding a link to Google's front page or the Facebook top banner, or even a
modified logo, with a link to a page which makes it easy to contact Congress
(and which can handle the load).

Why does this require so much talk and so little action? Why do we keep seeing
headlines of "consider", rather than the headlines we hope to see of the
action taken and the resulting impact?

~~~
jsilence
And with Google Ads Google has a mechanism to very efficiently injecting the
message into a plethora of websites.

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JacobIrwin
First, construct a phase 1-blackout. Where any users sees a large screen with
info to contact their reps (and then allows them to proceed to the app).

The outcome of this less-abrasive approach may be enough - and if not, Plan B
can then be implemented; a complete blackout.

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firefoxman1
Seems pretty reasonable to me. It's obviously bad business to get involved in
politics, but for these companies it's either "Take ourselves offline for
temporarily or face the chance of getting put out of business forever."

~~~
wmf
_It's obviously bad business to get involved in politics_

Quite the opposite; each dollar spent on lobbying usually produces more than a
dollar in government subsidies.

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megaframe
I'd like to see it if nothing else I think it would force those of us who have
been to lazy to do something that day... as in "Well I was going to browse
around for an hour before doing actual work but with all my sites down guess
I'll do this SOPA letter to my representative thing that's been on my ToDo
list"

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bwb
We plan to have a splash page up Jan 23rd with info on Sopa and explaining why
it's so vital people call their congressional rep.

Site5.com frontpage will be gone for a 24 hour period for it, Thanks, Ben

~~~
bwb
Would be awesome if someone built a WP Sopa plugin that did this for any WP
blog, basically a splash page with how to contact your rep and what sopa could
do to the net.

If anyone can build this let me know, we can help you host and get publicity
and I'd be willing to pay you for your time if you think it's possible ->
bwb@site5.com

It would need to be made soon so it can go to users asap to prep for jan 23rd,
Thanks, Ben

~~~
tiddchristopher
I sent you an email. (chris@ctidd.com)

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rmc
This is a rehash of old news, without actually providing anything new.

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chrisacky
I would definately support a permanent blackout of Paypal. Please turn off and
don't come back.

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huhtenberg
Does <http://netcolation.com> look fishy to anyone? It has no formal list of
members, but instead claims to "represent" Google and others without
elaborating as to what this means. It also looks like a part-time operation
run by a pair of lawyers.

I am all for a coalition, but this looks odd at best and may easily backfire.
If they _are_ assigning themselves to be Google's representatives on the
matter, then Google will have no choice but to distantiate from this entity,
and this will inevitably be picked up by the media as "Google breaks away from
anti-SOPA coalition."

~~~
jerfelix
Corrected Link: <http://www.netcoalition.com/>

~~~
huhtenberg
Thanks

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Joakal
That's the equivalent of USA blowing up an USA base with nuclear bombs to
defend against the invaders. Please take it to them, blow up the invaders in
their own bases.

Instead, promote Internet Freedom to replace and outlaw SOPA, DMCA, PROTECT-
IP, COICA, CEST, OPENA, ACTA and more.

The pacifist nature of the SOPA movement sucks because it targets one bill,
when there's a tsunami of anti-Internet bills.

~~~
jobu
A scorched earth policy like you describe is bad for both sides, but sometimes
the only viable option. Russia used it to thwart both Napoleon and Hitler

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sdoowpilihp
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.

~~~
Achshar
Plus they obviously wont pull down paid services like google apps or AWS, etc.

~~~
ladzoppelin
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.

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davidu
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).

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mseebach
They shouldn't do a blackout, they should "flag" links to/pages/accounts of
politicians who hasn't pledged opposition to SOPA. If they are in favour of
destroying the Internet, they shouldn't enjoy the privilege of having Google
and Facebook assist their campaigns.

~~~
kurtvarner
No, they should do a blackout.

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kondro
I really don't think this will work because the Government will see it for the
empty threat that it truly is.

A Google or a Facebook prove they have the guts to throw their off-switch for
anyone to take this seriously.

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geoffschmidt
The goal is to raise awareness. For example, every cable news program in
America would cover it as one of the day's top stories. You can't buy that
with money.

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Florin_Andrei
Technically you could, but you'd need lots and lots of money.

~~~
jobu
I'm guessing it would be on par with the money they'd lose being offline for
even a day.

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pfisters
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?

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tintin
They could also just block all SOPA voters from access to there services. Most
of the pro-SOPA companies have knows IP-ranges.

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marichyasana
Instead of a blackout, why not have a period of "IPV6" only?

~~~
wmf
Because combining two unrelated ideas is confusing (e.g. it would lead people
to the false belief that upgrading to IPv6 will negate the effects of SOPA).

