

Tumblr's anti-censorship message generated 87,834 phone calls to representatives - nextparadigms
http://staff.tumblr.com/post/12930076128/a-historic-thing

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Aaronontheweb
I used this service to speak to my Congresswoman for the first time in my
life. Kudos to the Tumblr team for enabling a lot of generally-not-political
people like me who to make our voices heard when needed.

~~~
benstein
This comment made me very, very happy. Hopefully you and many other first time
callers will continue to make your voices heard in the political process.
Despite what the cynics may say, calling your legislators really does make a
difference.

Benjamin Stein Co-founder & CTO, Mobile Commons

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Aaronontheweb
I could actually hear the "oh shit" realization in the aide's voice when I
spoke to him. I explained how the bill worked and how it could impact him and
some of the services he uses every day. That made my day.

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izaidi
I just want to make sure I understand: you called the Congresswoman's office,
the aide answered, you explained the situation to him, he realized it was
important, and he agreed to let you talk to his boss?

~~~
Aaronontheweb
No, didn't get to talk to his boss :(

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jcc80
While it's clear SOPA isn't going anywhere, my concern is that the "next" SOPA
won't be so extreme and hence, the outrage will be muted. All they need is a
foothold to build off of. Luckily they were dumb this time and tried to go
big.

~~~
shawnc
What you said here, this is exactly what I thought. I've watched how gas
prices rise. They go REALLY high, everyone has an outrage, they lower it and
we all calm down. Then they rise slowly, and they get to that same price
everyone was outraged about but now it's happened slowly, like the boiling
frog. Plus, we outraged once, now we're just tired. It's going to happen the
same way with this.

~~~
jcc80
Yes, the fatigue of everyday people (including my own) to these types of
things is disappointing. Who can keep up with all the funny cat videos out
there though...

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datums
I contacted her via the EFF site

Reply from Senator Gillibrand

Thank you for writing to me regarding S. 968, the PROTECT IP Act of 2011. I
understand your concerns.

I am a cosponsor of this legislation because I believe that we must protect
American intellectual property against foreign websites that infringe upon our
rights. By empowering the Attorney General of the United States to go after
foreign infringing websites, this legislation becomes a necessary tool to
ensure that U.S. companies remain competitive in the world marketplace. I
recognize that there are technical concerns with the enforcement of this bill
that need to be addressed. I am committed to working with my colleagues in the
United States Senate to ensure that this legislation protects the
Constitutional rights of Americans and does not stifle lawful free speech or
innovation on the internet.

Thank you again for writing to express your concerns, and I hope that you keep
in touch with my office regarding future legislation. For more information on
this and other important issues, please visit my website at
<http://gillibrand.senate.gov> and sign up for my e-newsletter.

~~~
ricardobeat
What about us foreigners?? :)

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OoTheNigerian
SOPA is a big deal and US will be worse off for it beacuse US based companies
will be put at a disadvantage ab-inito.

However, I think the people campaigning for opposition have failed to use
'normal' words to explain how it will affect the masses. For us here that have
startups and are interested in these things, words like 'infringe copyright',
'safe-habour' etc make sense.

All 90% of the masses need to know is this: If you paste that funny clip you
saw on MTV on your Facebook, MTV can shut down Facebook or sue you.

If you put that image you Googled on your blog, ALL your adsense money can be
seized. If you Tweet it, you Twitter account can be closed.

When 'the masses' hear this, it would make no sense cos it doesn't. We should
"dumb down" the message to get it accross to the 'mainstream' populace

I just wonder why the US legislature would want to deliberately cripple US's
strength on the web.

~~~
wmf
_If you paste that funny clip you saw on MTV on your Facebook, MTV can shut
down Facebook or sue you._

Video is an interesting case since much of it is explicitly embeddable; you
can't encourage embedding and then call it copyright infringement.

~~~
aaam
The problem is that while one part of the corporation can encourage you to
share that video, this does not prevent any another part of the same
corporation to claim that this act is "infringement?

All they need to do is can claim "infringement" without having to prove
anything, without any obligation of fairness, correctness, and no penalty when
wrong. After that your website is taken offline, your income is frozen, your
income disappears and only then you may sue to get it all back, without any
possibility of being compensated for your time and expenses.

The problem is that there is no neutral, objective oversight before damage is
done and no compensation of damages caused by wrongful enforcement, which
leaves us without protection against overzealous, perhaps even full automated,
enforcement.

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CWIZO
Can somebody explain what exactly did they do? Who made those calls?

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tombot
Tumblr created a page which allowed anyone to be instantly connected to their
House Representative, here's the landing page they used to take request for
calls <http://www.tumblr.com/protect-the-net>

They also censored content on users dashboard e.g
[http://tctechcrunch2011.files.wordpress.com/2011/11/sopatumb...](http://tctechcrunch2011.files.wordpress.com/2011/11/sopatumblrshot.png?w=640)

~~~
akc
Did they use tropo?

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tombot
Nope apparently they used <http://www.mobilecommons.com/>

Although you could probably swap that with Tropo / Twillio etc

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stfu
It is great to see that tumblr is actually doing something! Putting up some ad
in the NYT/WSJ is not enough.

Google could have done something similar, e.g. blacking out every first search
result or something like that. In this ongoing attack on freedom and the
internet in its current form it is time to flex some muscles.

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rexreed
On a side note, the graphs / charts on this page are really quite visually
appealing. Does anyone know if these were automatically generated charts, and
if so what tool is used? If not, probably just some data extraction and
photoshop, but still, nice looking data.

~~~
iamdave
They say they connected with Mobile Commons to build the app, so my immediate
guess was Mobile Commons provided them with the API and statistics, and tumblr
just designed around those stats for the visual styling.

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SagelyGuru
Does this SOPA law include shutting down .org .com .net etc domains worldwide,
based on accusations of breaking the US software patents?

I understand it is intended to achieve the worldwide shutdowns for copyright
issues, using the fact that these domains are administered by US companies.

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ricardobeat
I'm a bit scared by this. Imagine if a company like Google did the same (they
already have Google Voice), but _supporting_ the bill?

As it's always been, media companies have a lot of power in their hands -
maybe even more so on the internet.

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maeon3
The big companies would censor the data stream between my motor cortex and
muscles if they could. But that is ridiculous, so they will settle for
censoring the streams between all computers. Remember, in 50 years we will all
have onboard computers integrated with our thoughts. we must program freedom
right into the fabric of the net. As free as the signals between my liver and
brain.

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rorrr
Imagine if Google did it.

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trustfundbaby
I use tumblr and while I understand and empathize with what they are trying to
do, I found their approach to be a little heavy handed. All the content on
your dashboard was blacked out, and for the entire day, when you went to edit
your content you got directed to the "call your congressman" page. I found it
very very off putting ... just my 2c.

~~~
wanorris
Given the way people use Tumblr, SOPA could force them to shut down the entire
site, or change it so drastically that it's no longer recognizable. A threat
of that nature makes it worth stepping on a few toes.

