Stop the Wall

January 18, 2012 3:16 AM

Stop the Wall - A group of NYC based Internet companies express their common distaste for SOPA and PIPA in this video
posted by rudhraigh (33 comments total)

Do you have to watch the video to find who the companies are ( can't watch it right now). I don't see it listed anywhere.
posted by sweetkid at 7:28 AM on January 18

The second link includes an intersectional ad that says "Take a Stand" or "Close this Window". That's terrible copy writing.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 7:35 AM on January 18 [1 favorite]

Mafalda says SOPA NO!
posted by Tom-B at 7:50 AM on January 18 [2 favorites]

There is an interesting story by mathowie in the meta thread. A few other useful links include the Boycott SOPA Android app, Organizations supporting SOPA plus the congress critters they own, Where Do Your Members of Congress Stand on SOPA and PIPA?

Falkvinge : It Is Time To Stop Pretending To Endorse The Copyright Monopoly
posted by jeffburdges at 8:00 AM on January 18 [6 favorites]

Behance, Four Square, Tutor Spree, Wicked Start, ifwerantheworld
posted by rudhraigh at 8:08 AM on January 18

It Is Time To Stop Pretending To Endorse The Copyright Monopoly

Creative Commons is the best solution I have seen to the Copyright monopoly. I wish more websites and blogs would make it an option for user-posted content to be Creative Commons. For example 40 years from now half the people who posted on MeFi will be dead, the other half won't remember, but almost none of the content will be available for researchers to re-use because it will be locked up in Copyright until about 2100 or so.
posted by stbalbach at 8:19 AM on January 18 [5 favorites]

There are more links at sopastrike.com, btw.
posted by jeffburdges at 8:20 AM on January 18 [1 favorite]

I am disturbed and disappointed to see AFL-CIO on that list of interests supporting the Bill. I would think that any union would value free and open communication, because it is a vital tool for workers and the 99% to organise against employers and corporate interests.
posted by lucien_reeve at 8:33 AM on January 18 [2 favorites]

I could be wrong, but I have a feeling that the AFL-CIO support has to do with the fact that the large companies lobbying for the bill are more likely to hire union labor, where, say, internet and other startups are more likely to rely on a freelance or otherwise non-unionized workforce.
posted by evidenceofabsence at 8:42 AM on January 18 [2 favorites]

This SOPA blackout thing is f-ing stupid. It penalizes the users instead of the people who are for this law. Hey, Black People want civil rights....lets not allow not allow them to do stuff for a day. Get to the back of the bus today. Denying service isn't a way to do a protest in this situation.
posted by GavinR at 9:19 AM on January 18

Gonna play the devils advocate here.

So basically, sites like reddit and metafilter are concerned about losing the ability to generate revenue from users aggregating (and commenting on) copyrighted material? And those users are upset about losing their free LOLs?

As a longtime metafilter member, I am not trolling here, just trying to better understand the issue in layman's terms. And this is how it seems from my perspective.

By the way, I am of the opinion that information really does seem to want to be "free".
posted by punkfloyd at 9:20 AM on January 18

The blackout isn't stupid at all. I'm sure at least 90% of Americans have no idea what SOPA or PIPA are. This is an excellent way to let them now. In some countries, it's routine to wake up and have YouTube blocked or some news site censored. Americans should take note.
posted by CheeseDigestsAll at 9:23 AM on January 18 [5 favorites]

I could be wrong, but I have a feeling that the AFL-CIO support has to do with the fact that the large companies lobbying for the bill are more likely to hire union labor, where, say, internet and other startups are more likely to rely on a freelance or otherwise non-unionized workforce.

It does raise awareness though. At least in my case.
posted by punkfloyd at 9:23 AM on January 18

This SOPA blackout thing is f-ing stupid. It penalizes the users instead of the people who are for this law. Hey, Black People want civil rights....lets not allow not allow them to do stuff for a day. Get to the back of the bus today. Denying service isn't a way to do a protest in this situation.

1. Having to click to do a few extra clicks to to use a website is a bit different from being beaten, lynched and systematically denied human rights for centuries.

2. Read up on the Montgomery Bus Strike, but first savor this interesting nugget:

The attorney for the bus company, a Harvard-educated, hard-line segregationist lawyer named Jack Crenshaw, stymied all efforts aimed at striking a compromise settlement. This radicalized King and his followers and prompted them to demand an end to segregation on the buses. After having called for only a one-day boycott, King upped the ante by calling for a strike of indefinite duration.

The most "stupid" thing about blackout may be that it only lasts for day.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 9:31 AM on January 18 [14 favorites]

What will penalize users is if all of the internet jobs move to countries without ludicrous 'anti-piracy' laws and websites cannot be accessed in the US.

But heaven forfend we inconvenience people trying to find out who starred in Who's The Boss or the dates of the Napoleonic Wars for a single day.
posted by winna at 9:40 AM on January 18 [4 favorites]

This SOPA blackout thing is f-ing stupid. It penalizes the users instead of the people who are for this law. Hey, Black People want civil rights....lets not allow not allow them to do stuff for a day. Get to the back of the bus today. Denying service isn't a way to do a protest in this situation.

Wow, it's been a while since I have seen an analogy so flawed. "f-ing stupid", even.

The point is not to penalize the users, but to make them aware. Most people had not heard of SOPA/PIPA until yesterday evening, when I finally saw a couple stories on the local news. The fact that even just local news are airing segments on the protests show that the purpose of the protests is being served. Hell, I am a software engineer, and I mentioned to my wife a while back that there was an Internet protest taking place on her birthday. She had no idea up to that point what SOPA or PIPA was, and she's married to one of those techie guys!

As an aside, what pains me is that some people really don't get the point of the protest. I see people "protesting" and saying they aren't going to login to Facebook all day in protest. That really makes no sense - the protests by sites like Wikipedia and Reddit are meant to be a reflection of what could be under the worst possible circumstances. Hell, similar to SOPA, so-called techies can still find ways around some of the blackouts (disable javascript, use mobile site, etc). Someone not logging into Facebook for a day not only does very little for awareness, but it's like some weird distorted view of the real protests.
posted by mysterpigg at 9:47 AM on January 18

So basically, sites like reddit and metafilter are concerned about losing the ability to generate revenue from users aggregating (and commenting on) copyrighted material? And those users are upset about losing their free LOLs?

IANAL, but I believe they are worried about allowing users to post links on their sites period- the copyright status of the referenced material isn't important. If a user posts a link to a site located overseas, and that site has been alleged to contain at least one piece of copyrighted material, then MetaFilter LLC is legally liable and can have their site turned off without recourse.

This happens whether or not the link from metafilter to the remote site actually links to any copyrighted content- if the MPAA or RIAA have alleged that the remote site contains copyrighted content then ANY link to that site is illegal. We know that the MPAA and RIAA track record is abysmal in this regard- there are many credible accounts that they have allegedly violations where non existed.

There is no safe harbor provision; this bill effectively destroys the ability to allow users to place links to other websites unless you have a huge legal compliance team. This means no more startups, either- they simply can't afford the lawyers.

So it isn't that I'm pissed about losing my free LOLs, I'm worried about losing reddit, metafilter, wikipedia, and fark. I'm worried that this law effectively criminalizes hrefs.
posted by jenkinsEar at 9:48 AM on January 18 [12 favorites]

Thank you jenkinsEar.
posted by punkfloyd at 10:07 AM on January 18

So basically, sites like reddit and metafilter are concerned about losing the ability to generate revenue from users aggregating (and commenting on) copyrighted material?

SOPA is not just targeted at commercial activity, regardless of what the mouthpieces claim. Copyright law has made non-commercial infringement a crime in some cases since 1997. SOPA builds on this.
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 10:11 AM on January 18

So basically, sites like reddit and metafilter are concerned about losing the ability to generate revenue from users aggregating (and commenting on) copyrighted material?

Read this post by creator of MetaFilter. He's worried about being shut down over an insane and idiotic mishap.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 10:43 AM on January 18 [1 favorite]

Around 12m into his Google Tech Talk, the pirate party founded Rcik Falkvinge explains that historically copyright grew out of the crowns' right to censor the press.

We know copyright gets used for censorship today : Scientology is infamous for doing so. MafiAA abuses it flagrantly. Disney hides their racist past, ala Song of the South. Russia. Howard Hughes. etc.

In fact, censorship is arguably intrinsic to any enforcement mechanism effective against individuals infringing.

We probably need copyrights enforceable against large organizations, otherwise Apple and Amazon would simply sell everything without paying anyone, but copyright enforceable against individuals and obstructing user generated content simply doesn't make any sense.
posted by jeffburdges at 11:16 AM on January 18 [1 favorite]

This SOPA blackout thing is f-ing stupid. It penalizes the users instead of the people who are for this law. Hey, Black People want civil rights....lets not allow not allow them to do stuff for a day. Get to the back of the bus today. Denying service isn't a way to do a protest in this situation.

Yeah it would be like if black people just stopped riding the bus entirely*, resulting in the busses shutting down because there weren't enough riders and everyone had to walk to their jobs or organize a carpool instead of sitting in the back. Obviously that's just crazy.

_{(*Obviously, you'll have to wait until tomorrow to read that link.)}
posted by delmoi at 11:45 AM on January 18 [2 favorites]

The Theory of Change Behind Website Shutdowns
Just fyi, all these links work fine if you disable JavaScript, making this blackout vaguely like the circumvention measures SOPA/PIPA would make essential and ubiquitous.
posted by jeffburdges at 11:52 AM on January 18

Btw according to Chris Dodd this blackout is an Abuse of Power!!!! And "Dangerous"

And I mean it's so unfair! Major lobbying groups have spent, like $94 million on SOPA/PIPA and that's like 10x Wikipedia's annual budget! How dare they engage in the political process without paying millions of dollars like them!
posted by delmoi at 11:52 AM on January 18 [1 favorite]

There was a time, not so very long ago, when I wouldn't have minded a blackout of Kate and Pippa.
posted by George_Spiggott at 12:03 PM on January 18

The Day The LOLcats Died
posted by homunculus at 12:28 PM on January 18 [1 favorite]

The Blackout reminded me to get off my hiney and write to my Republican congresscritters, (one of whom is a notorious conservative with a history of contentious run-ins with a particular federal agency in charge of regulating pilots so they don't land on closed runways), featured numerous arguments with a MY GOD WON'T YOU THINK OF THE CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS OF THE POOR CORPORATIONS theme. It was ridiculously fun to write.
posted by Dr. Zira at 12:36 PM on January 18

Btw according to Chris Dodd this blackout is an Abuse of Power!!!! And "Dangerous"

Chris Dodd’s paid SOPA crusading
posted by homunculus at 12:37 PM on January 18 [1 favorite]

> Falkvinge : It Is Time To Stop Pretending To Endorse The Copyright Monopoly

That has got to be the most electrifying and cogent thing I've read recently on the whole copyright mess.
posted by mmrtnt at 12:51 PM on January 18

The #FactsWithoutWikipedia tag is all kinds of awesome.
posted by Dr. Zira at 2:39 PM on January 18 [2 favorites]

Anyone tech savvy planning on running against Rep. Lamar Smith? It appears this Richard Mack guy might wish to challenge him in the Republican primary.
posted by jeffburdges at 4:56 PM on January 18

There are some webcomics with humorously censored comics for SOPA/PIPA day, like xkcd.com and abstrusegoose.com.
posted by jeffburdges at 7:43 AM on January 19

Sir Tim Berners-Lee Speaks Out On SOPA
posted by jeffburdges at 2:33 AM on January 20