On Wednesday the Internet "goes on strike" to protest SOPA and other Net-stifling schemes

from sopastrike.com

by Ken

Here's a general description also from the sopastrike.com website (a project of fightforthefuture.org):

January 18th is going to be amazing. Sites are striking in all different ways, but they are united by this: do the biggest thing you possibly can, and drive contacts to Congress.

On Jan 24th, Congress will vote to pass internet censorship in the Senate, even though the vast majority of Americans are opposed. We need to kill the bill - PIPA in the Senate and SOPA in the House - to protect our rights to free speech, privacy, and prosperity. We need internet companies to follow Reddit's lead and stand up for the web, as we internet users are doing every day.

Here at DWT we've provided a fair amount of coverage of the unspeakably dreadful proposed Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), a crucial early step undertaken by a coalition of big corporate interests aimed at converting the Internet into their private -- and that "private" is important) commercial space. (See, for example, Howie's December 23 post, "Strange Being On The Same Side With Darrell Issa?") Naturally it's being supported by all those proclaimedly "pro-business" (what they really mean, of course is pro-certain-kinds-of-businesses) parties, which in Congress means not just most Republicans (though not, perhaps surprisingly, Darrell Issa -- see Howie's post but an alarming number of "I can be bought too!" Democrats.

The grim reality is that even if SOPA can be derailed at least for now, with so much money at stake for the proponents, we can expect a continuing onslaught of further such initiatives until the people behind them have worn the rest of us down and gotten what they want, inch by inch if necessary.

WIKIPEDIA JOINS THE PARTY

Wikipeda to Shut Down in Protest of SOPA
Published: January 16, 2012 @ 10:37 am

By Lucas Shaw

Wikipedia will shut down for 24 hours Wednesday to protest the Stop Online Piracy Act, founder Jimmy Wales announced on Monday.

In doing so, Wikipedia joins a long list of web companies such as Reddit and Mozilla that are taking similar measures against the proposed legislation.

Wales used his Twitter account to spread the news, writing “Student warning! Do your homework early. Wikipedia protesting bad law on Wednesday! #sopa”

In place of Wikipedia, users will see instructions for how to reach local members of Congress, which Wales hopes "will melt phone systems in Washington."

He also noted that comScore estimates the English Wikipedia’s web traffic at 25 million daily visitors worldwide.

The White House issued a warning Saturday about SOPA, as well as related legislation such as the Protect Intellectual Property Act (PIPA) and the Online Protection and Digital Enforcement Act (OPEN), which would give the government and content companies more power to police the unlawful promulgation of their intellectual property.

It insisted any effort to combat online piracy “must guard against the risk of online censorship of lawful activity and must not inhibit innovation by our dynamic businesses large and small.”

The Motion Picture Association of America was conciliatory -- but firm -- in its response to the White House's statement.

"We welcome the Administration's clear statement that legislation is needed to stop foreign based thieves from stealing the hard work and creativity of millions of American workers," the MPAA said, in a statement prepared by Michael O’Leary, Senior Executive Vice President for Global Policy and External Affairs for the MPAA.

The goals of Wednesday's protest seem to me beyond argument. I do worry, though -- much as I don't wish to rain on anyone's parade -- that the list of protest-participating sites could pass for a "Who's Who?" of sites the Big Money Net opportunists consider irrelevant or just plain in their way. They probably think of it as the nucleus of a "Good Riddance!" list.

CONFIRMED PARTICIPANTS (links onsite)
(listed as of this afternoon, with many more sites included in a huge list of sites -- I counted 1712 -- that are reported to be participating but that the site operators haven't had time to verify yet)

Cake Wrecks
Cheezburger, Fail blog, The Daily What, and more
Destructoid
dotSUB
Doxie Lovers Club
Free Press
Free Software Foundation
Good Old Games
Good.is
The Leaky Wiki
little-apps.org
Minecraft
Mojang
MoveOn
Mozilla
Ragemaker
Red 5
Reddit
A Softer World
stfuconservatives.net
This Is Why I'm Broke
Tucows
vanillaforums.org
TwitPic
Wikipedia
Wordpress
XDA-Developers

Here's more information, both for websites and for Web users, provided by sopastrike.com:

(To use the links here you'll have to go to the site.)

UPDATE: One More

Rob Zerban, the progressive Democrat taking on Paul Ryan is also closing down his website for the day. Big deal? Ryan gets millions for corporate special interests; they're not going to give a dime to Zerban. Zerban gets his contribution from small donors and they contribute online. 24 hours offline is real for him. Help him stop Ryan here.

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