Thoughts on the Blackouts

Steam"x" network blackout next? :D

I love it. It's nice to see communitys attempting to show what it would be like if sopa won. I think we shoulda get on it too.

I am fine if all of the above mentioned websites except YouTube cease to exist.

Edit: and, ofcoruse, SteamGifts.com.

I support this blackouts, i even had my own at school today.

I think it's great to see big companies and corporations raise awareness of SOPA and PIPA.

Apart from that, I wanna go on reddit :c

Adding my name to the list of people on SteamGifts in support of blackouts.

I support the blackouts. Even the people on the Internet have to take a stand for what they believe in. I've called, mailed and e-mailed my senator and representatives, and as of...now I'm gonna be offline for the duration of the blackout.

I do NOT support blackouts, they are just useless. They only make internet users mad, not the congressmen.
It is like shuting down an hospital because they are making some laws about cutting funds.... Just don't take care of those who are making the law (if you really want to do something), don't let the other people die.

• this is Lamar Smith the author of SOPA
• I dont know if it is true, but I loled

So much work will be undone today.

We're supporting the SOPA strike as well.

You can actually still view the stream and the chat via their direct links, though. It's not perfect but it gets the point across. Hilariously enough even though I mentioned it via our Steam group I've already got a few people wondering where the site went.

I'm all for the blackouts if it helps raise awareness. They may seem silly, but some people who may not have known about SOPA certainly do now. It's also making a point - THIS could be our internet if we don't do something about it.

Obviously, I'm strongly against SOPA, as I hope most people would be. I've been tweeting, emailing, etc. to raise awareness, and of course, signing petitions: http://sopastrike.com/strike

A screen filled with bright colors uses much more electricity than darker ones (Y)

I've found it really touching how many websites decided to black out completely or partially, I've been following the bill for the past few weeks and saw a list of a lot of the sites that were going to participate, but then today came and it seemed like a whole lot more came out of the woods and went dark too. <3

edit: http://idealab.talkingpointsmemo.com/2012/01/sopapipa-lose-more-supporters-on-blackout-day.php

Thank you for your support, i'm doing what i can aswell to spread the word aswell, but not everyone understands what's really behind it, yesterday on facebook i saw a Cynical Brit post about it (TotalHalibut on youtube, Total Biscuit), and its pretty much spot on imo:

"Let's be honest, the people behind SOPA/PIPA are smart, very smart. They know without a doubt the bill will not put a dent in piracy. The kind of people who pirate and run piracy services are far too smart to be brought to heel by mere legislation and have continued to elude the best efforts of the US and it's lackeys. SOPA/PIPA exists for one reason, to protect an aging and crooked business model, dominated by large corporations who are slowly but surely being eroded by people like you and me. These corporations want to stifle the internet because the internet is the biggest threat to their dominance that has ever existed. For decades, through control of radio stations and television channels, corporations have made bank, but now, all the money in the world can't save them from guys in their bedrooms and home-made studios creating content that is more relevant to the current generation. The variety the big media corporations refused to provide because it "wasn't profitable", is now being provided by hundreds of thousands of amateur, semi-pro and professional independent creators and directors and we're all competing for the most important currency of all, time. The time you spend watching our material is time you don't spend watching theirs. It's money directly out of their pocket that they could have been earning before the internet came along and that's the hilarious thing about this whole deal. Piracy is not what's killing their profits, completely legitimate competition from the internet is. They use the cause of "fighting piracy" as a trojan horse to force through bought and paid for legislation to kill independent content creation for good because they can see the end is nigh for their aging and increasingly irrelevant business model. They know they cannot win legitimately, so they do what they've always done, exploit a corrupt political system to bully and extort their way to what they want.

This is what SOPA/PIPA are really about and that is why you should oppose them. You are standing up for what your generation represents, just as previous generations have done the same on a slew of different issues. As much as those in power would like us to believe we are the apathetic, lazy generation. The truth is we are anything but and that scares the shit out of them."

I fully support the blackouts, and in fact wish that 2 more sites joined in. If Facebook and Twitter had participated in the blackout, then that would have really sent the strongest message possible. Both of them are already open opponents of SOPA, and so their participation wouldn't be surprising. But of all of the sites that participated in the blackout, these 2 could have sent the strongest message to the actual politicians (Twitter especially). I know that people complain about "What would we do if we couldn't access Twitter/Facebook for a day?" but that's the whole point of it. Would you rather go without them for a day now, or risk going without them forever.

The reason why I point out these 2 sites specifically (as opposed to something like YouTube) is that they would get the most coverage. Imagine a politician trying to use Twitter to send a message to their supporters (as many do now), only to find out that they can't access it because of SOPA. Imagine one of the 800 million users trying to use Facebook and running into the same issue. This would be the single largest wake-up call that many people could need.

Highly against The SOPA & PIPA, for the following reasons.

Recently I had to make a presentation of how the restriction of violent videogames should be legal, one case proved to be invaluable during my presentation. I used the Brown Vs. Entertain Merchants Association supreme court case, in which was ruled 7-2 IN FAVOR FOR VIDEOGAMES, on the grounds of Videogames are protected by the first amendment freedom of speech, and communicate ideas. If this was argued in the supreme court I bet the justices would argue even further. Especially Antonin Scalia(Argued heavily in Brown Vs. EMA)

If SOPA & PIPA were to pass, they not only would censor nearly everything we have here. But what else? they censor our rights? Censor our possessions?, censor our liberty?, censor our life?, censor our pursuit of happiness?, For all that is given stated by the Declaration of Independence.

SO WHAT MUST WE DO?

"Aye, fight and you may die, run, and you'll live... at least a while. And dying in your beds, many years from now, would you be willin' to trade ALL the days, from this day to that, for one chance, just one chance, to come back here and tell our enemies that they MAY TAKE OUR LIVES, BUT THEY'LL NEVER TAKE... OUR FREEDOM!" - Wallace(Braveheart)

Very well said, Loko!
I personally believe that this piracy is a real issue and needs to be stopped, but the entire way they're going about this is wrong. They're making it much too easy for many different parties to shut down websites that aren't at all to blame for the stuff that these websites' users say.

It just really annoys me that the majority of the U.S. government doesn't care if they bring the entire internet down, just so long as their laws are put into place. It's simply disgusting.

+1 to lokonopa

You make us proud with your insightful post, thank you.

Remember people Governments abuse the power given to them all so frequently. All they need for it go on and even further is your consent. It's your duty as humanbeings to speak out against injustice worldwide.

no, thank you loko.

It's hypocrisy, that's what this protest is. You people are all against censorhip, but see what happens when I post a "naughty" word on here. Double standards is what you facebook-loving attention whores are all about. Now go protest taking down websites by taking down websites.

FYI same sheat we have; Internet "Filtering" in Turkey, first 22 August 2011 then 23 oct.

some links

some links

I like how people "demonstrates" against this piece off **** (SOPA)