

Wikipedia Considers Total Blackout to Oppose SOPA - duck
http://torrentfreak.com/wikipedia-mulls-total-blackout-to-oppose-sopa-111212/

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sbov
Even coming from a stance of neutrality, the time to be political is when your
existence is threatened.

The only reason why Wikipedia's existence might not be threatened by the bill
is because they're just too popular. Those behind SOPA know that if they
enforced it against a site like Wikipedia it would reveal it as the flawed
piece of legislation it is. Instead they will nab smaller time websites for
infringements because people won't care as much.

In a way, SOPA might be good for the Facebooks and the Wikipedias because they
will never get shutdown, but their competitors might. I guess this is
contradictory to my first sentence, but I don't believe in relying on "too big
to fail" for existence.

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fendrak
A true blackout would be hellish: I don't know that there's a day that goes by
that I don't read something on Wikipedia (which is the point, of course).

A simple, but effective, solution would be to simply change the site's style
to draw all article text with a black background, a la redacted documents.

If this was done, users could still manually highlight using their browsers to
view the text (and screen readers would still work just fine), but the effect
would be still be striking, to say the least.

~~~
pivotal
I think an action similar to what BoingBoing did on internet censorship day
might be good. On the a user's first visit of the day, a popup stops the
visit, saying "This site has been blocked. Not really, but under SOPA it could
be.", with an OK to continue. The same thing on google would really make a
stir.

I don't think people really understand the ramifications of the law, and an
example that affected them would do wonders for everyday internet users, with
a side effect of drumming up needed media attention.

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SoftwareMaven
I really hope they do this. There are few things that will get Americans'
attention; this one might (Google not working for a day might, too, but that
isn't going to happen).

Of course, the fear-mongers would probably just accuse Wikipedia of being
terrorist and pirate sympathizers.

And even if people cared, would that actually affect the legislative process?
I'm not hopeful.

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Kell
If Wikipedia goes down, all the media will start reporting it. And then
reporting on SOPA. And I do really think that that sort of action (if the
media do some research on why the action is being done) can have an impact on
the legislator.

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BigZaphod
I love this idea and fully support it, but a possibly unintended side effect
would be reporting of this event taking a turn towards: "Holy crap, we all
rely a lot on Wikipedia! Who are these people who run this global resource,
anyway? Can we trust them? Should this sort of information source be regulated
for the sake of the public good? Should it even be possible for these
unaccountable people to pull such an important site from the internet without
any oversight?! We need more laws!"

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chc
This will never make it past the wikilawyers running the US version. They live
to find reasons to shoot down anything anybody proposes, even if they
acknowledge that thing is ultimately right and beneficial. WP:IGNORE and
WP:BURO essentially do not exist for many editors. (In many cases, this ready-
fire-aim mindset is actually beneficial, because a lot of people have a lot of
bad ideas that should be summarily rejected. But it gets in your way whether
or not you're not an idiot.)

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freehunter
If they do it during the upcoming/in-progress finals season... god help us
all. On one hand, it would cause the biggest effect, but it would also be
mainly reaching people who are not known to vote in large numbers.

~~~
Hyena
Shifting the opinion of normal voters probably won't matter; they tend to have
strong, pre-existing loyalties and SOPA is unlikely to change them. But
motivating a group that tends not to vote completely upsets the balance of
power in the US even if its still just a minority of that group.

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NHQ
I doubt there is a better PR mechanism in existence than the blacking out of
Wikipedia. Count my support for this measure.

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digitalsushi
If it's bread and circuses that keep our less aware, equally voting brothers
and sisters sated and deaf to our call to action, then perhaps a little less
of each is exactly the prescription. I think wikipedia has been both bread and
circus to us all, at work and home. If I was asked by a less technical friend
what it meant to see a black wikipedia, I would feel it had worked well and I
would finish opening their eyes. And I would feel proud to have helped.

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Fliko
It would be very inconvenient for the entire world but I totally support it,
and I hope it happens soon because it would send a very powerful message to
many people around the world about bills like SOPA.

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mfringel
To what end? This is a bet on a third-order effect.

Action: Wikipedia goes into blackout.

First-order effect: People get angry because they can't look up something.

Second-order effect: They internalize that they should be angry about SOPA,
and call their congresscritter.

Third-order effect: The amount of voters calling is enough to make said
congresscritter oppose SOPA.

The only guarantee is that people won't be able to access wikipedia.
Everything else is increasingly unlikely.

~~~
ianstormtaylor
Well if you take Tumblr's recent censoring as evidence, it can easily work.

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pasbesoin
Do it. This is not a time for half measures.

(It will inconvenience me, yes. That's the entire point -- it's the sole
message that is likely to reach the masses, clearly. Do it, please!

At the risk of diluting my message, I'll further argue that this is what we
need more of: Take away those "gifts" of technology from those who would
pervert it. There's "no law" saying that the technorati have to support such
morons. At least, not to my knowledge, not in the U.S. -- yet.)

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ctdonath
Expected response from the powers that be: "Your terms are acceptable. Good
riddance."

Thomas Paine et al did not protest censorship by ceasing publication.

~~~
colanderman
A blackout is not meant to attract the attention of the powers that be. A
blackout is meant to attract the attention of the _users_. Wikipedia's users
will say no such thing.

~~~
ctdonath
Within hours (minutes? seconds?) of a Wikipedia shutdown, someone else will
have a duplicate up and running, touting reliability and "we don't play
political games".

~~~
colanderman
And users will find it how?

(Sure, after a week or so it might find its way to the same Google ranks as
About.com's existing Wikipedia clone. But by then the message has been
delivered.)

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thezilch
This could have some adverse effects in SERPs. Google? Matt Cutts? What could
Wikipedia, or other sites looking to contribute to this cause with a
unavailable site, do to not hurt their position in search? 503 Status-Code?
Worthwhile to include a Retry-After header?

~~~
brian_cloutier
Even if it does, caring about what position of the first page you're on is a
little less important that caring about whether you're going to be around in a
year.

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rhizome
It's not enough to oppose SOPA, we need laws that explicitly prohibit the bad
parts. Some things need to be fenced off or the animals will ruin it, and make
no mistake, if SOPA fails they'll try again and again until they reach a
maximum. The only way to prevent this from happening again (and make no
mistake, they already have backup plans) is to prohibit it.

~~~
gojomo
We actually already have a law against the bad parts: the Bill of Rights and
specifically the First Amendment.

~~~
rhizome
I'm not sure that's enough.

~~~
thret
I'm quite certain it's not enough.

~~~
gojomo
The 1st Amendment was enough for the Supreme Court to knock down 1989's Flag
Desecration Act (US vs. Eichman, 1990), parts of 1994's Communications Decency
Act (Reno vs. ACLU, 1997), 1998's COPA (Mukasey vs. ACLU, through 2009) and
2002's McCain-Feingold (Citizens United, through 2010) as unfairly restrictive
of free speech. Congress passes lots of dumb speech-restricting laws that
eventually get knocked down.

When these DNS-delisting enforcement operations – those from either before or
hypothetically after SOPA might pass – finally get real, full-stack court
review, they could very well wind up judicially prohibited as
unconstitutional. It just takes a while.

~~~
rhizome
Which is exactly the thing that should be legislated up front. There's no need
to spend decades waiting for a good case to challenge bad law. I shudder to
think about "oh, we'll just work it out in the courts" before the law is even
passed.

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dlf
All for it. I would hate to be without Wikipedia, even for a day, but I would
hate seeing SOPA pass a lot more.

~~~
thret
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Database_download>

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buss
Maybe they should black out current events and all information about political
candidates. That would get the attention of a lot of people.

They might be ensnared in the equal exposure laws during an election season,
though.

~~~
digitalsushi
As a website, wikipedia was not eligible for the 1934 Communications Act which
describes the law of which you speak.

~~~
buss
Yep, that's the one I was thinking about. Thanks, and you're correct!

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mrleinad
Well, it'll have to be for a long time for it to be REALLY inconvenient.
Google's cache will still allow you to access some of its content, what may be
enough for some people.

But yes, hope they go for it and stop SOPA.

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raymondh
A "rolling blackout" would be just an effective -- go dark for a few hours
each day.

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tzs
This is a horrible idea. Once Wikipedia starts advocating political positions,
it will raise doubts as to the neutrality of Wikipedia content.

~~~
jxcole
Since SOPA could be used to take all of Wikipedia down because some single
user posted something in violation of copyright, I think it's appropriate for
Wikipedia to advocate this. If it were any issue that didn't fly directly in
the face of Wikipedia's ability to run I would agree with you.

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gojomo
I have mixed feelings about this idea. SOPA is awful, but political neutrality
is an important principle.

Perhaps formal neutrality could be maintained by simply offering an awareness
banner: replace the fundraising insert with informational links to both pro-
and anti-SOPA websites. The readers will be able to figure out the right
position, for their own interests. (Perhaps, even, any pro-SOPA site would be
toppled by the natural clickthrough traffic.)

Even if a protest displaces the fundraising banners for a day or more, the
added attention to Wikipedia might boost the overall fundraiser.

~~~
jasonwocky
>I have mixed feelings about this idea. SOPA is awful, but political
neutrality is an important principle.

I have a hard time seeing why "political neutrality" is ever an important
principle, but especially in this case, Wikipedia would be acting in what it
considers to be it's own self-interest. What merits are there in any entity
remaining "neutral" in circumstances like that?

~~~
gojomo
It sounds like you have an activist/politicking mentality. That's fine, but
it's not for everyone or every institution. One of Wikipedia's pillars,
"written from a neutral point-of-view" (NPOV), considers neutrality (including
about political controversies) an important principle.

Political neutrality is also considered a good thing for judges, various
public officials, and many journalists. If you have a diversity of strong
political opinions in your family or workplace, keeping the shared
spaces/events/organizations politically neutral is also usually a good idea.

~~~
burgerbrain
Defense is not "activism", but rather " _re_ activism".

And nothing about "neutrality" suggests that you should not act in defense.

~~~
gojomo
If SOPA passed, and then either some copyright-holder or prosecutor tried to
use it against Wikipedia – then opposing that action would be a 'defense'.
This is specific preemptive WP:ADVOCACY.

And as bad as SOPA is, _there are many worse laws proposed or existing around
the world_. Should every Wikipedia in countries that already have far worse
free-speech laws be constantly blinking out in intermittent protest, once this
threshold for 'stop-the-service' activism is set?

~~~
burgerbrain
That is an unnecessarily and unjustifiably limited definition of defense. The
mere proposal of legislation is an attack. _"WP:ADVOCACY"_ is not a convincing
argument for that viewpoint. Furthermore, defense can certainly be preemptive,
so we have multiple levels of 'wrong' here.

 _" Should every Wikipedia in countries that already have far worse free-
speech laws be constantly blinking out in intermittent protest, once this
threshold for 'stop-the-service' activism is set?"_

Arguably, yes. They should always do this in response to legislation that so
directly effects them. Doing it after the fact is obviously of much more
limited utility.

 _"activism"_

Again, this is a silly accusation.

