Is this what you want to see when you click on your favorite web site?
It could happen, especially if Hollywood and the recording industry have their way.
Will Google, Amazon, and Facebook Black Out the Net?
In the growing battle for the future of the Web, some of the biggest sites online — Google, Facebook, and other tech stalwarts — are considering a coordinated blackout of their sites, some of the web’s most popular destinations.
No Google searches. No Facebook updates. No Tweets. No Amazon.com shopping. Nothing.
The action would be a dramatic response to the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), a bill backed by the motion picture and recording industries that is intended to eliminate theft online once and for all. HR 3261 would require ISPs to block access to sites that infringe on copyrights — but how exactly it does that has many up in arms. The creators of some of the web’s biggest sites argue it could instead dramatically restrict law-abiding U.S. companies — and reshape the web as we know it.
A blackout would be drastic. And though the details of exactly how it would work are unclear, it’s already under consideration, according to Markham Erickson, the executive director of NetCoalition, a trade association that includes the likes of Google, PayPal, Yahoo, and Twitter.
Full Story Here:
Will Google, Amazon, And Facebook Black Out The Net?
I use Google, PayPal, Twitter and Facebook on a daily basis. I use Google many times a day, I use Twitter and Facebook to help syndicate the blog and its content. I have readers that make an occasional donation in order to help me keep the blog up and running.
I don’t use a FREE blog service, I have paid hosting and URL services, and it costs money to keep a page on the ‘net, a professional, well built and secure page anyway.
Free is just that, FREE … and you get what you pay for.
If Google, PayPal, Twitter, Facebook and several others actually went BLACK, it would be nothing short of disastrous for this blog and all others, not to mention the millions of other sites on the WWW.
“When the home pages of Google.com, Amazon.com, Facebook.com, and their Internet allies simultaneously turn black with anti-censorship warnings that ask users to contact politicians about a vote in the U.S. Congress the next day on SOPA,” Declan McCullagh wrote, “you’ll know they’re finally serious.”
Serious indeed! But I can understand how actors and musicians would want to stop on-line piracy of their work, it does cost them money, I UNDERSTAND that part, but if they don’t want to be stolen from, it should be up to them to build in protections to their work that can stop, or at least slow down the on-line pirates.
Crying to the federal government to step in and be a *nanny government* is NOT the answer.
I also understand why some are so concerned about copyright and plagiarism.
I use a tremendous amount of material from other sites, that material is the basis for all, or nearly all of my commentary. I also make very certain that any time I use material from a web site not my own that I reference that site with a HOT link back to them and the page I am using in MY story.
I never use the works of others and try to claim them as my own. That is called being a man of honor and exercising what I call Journalistic Integrity. Sadly, there are those that can’t tell you the definition of the words Journalistic Integrity.
“SOPA targets foreign websites that sell counterfeit drugs and stolen copies of Hollywood movies — not such American Web sites as YouTube or your favorite blog,” wrote Richard Bennett, senior research fellow at the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation, in an editorial in the New York Post.
Mr. Bennett may be correct, I am not in a position to say, one way or another, but I have to shake my head in wonderment as I remember the words of then House Speaker Nancy Pelosi as she said, ““We have to pass the bill so you can find out what is in it”.
That’s NOT the way the American people need to find out what is contained in the comedy troupe that passes themselves off as Congress.
Others have taken a more proactive approach, voting with their dollars against those who support the bill. GoDaddy.com, one of the largest domain registrars on the Internet, stands to potentially lose thousands of customers on Thursday, Dec. 29, or “Dump GoDaddy Day,” the culmination of an ongoing boycott of the company.
I use GoDaddy.com as the registrar for my domain name, I am still no exactly sure I am going to keep GoDaddy.com as that provider. It appears that GoDaddy.com is waffling a bit, sticking a finger in the pot to see how warm the waters are. Very Fred Thompson.
Internet registrar GoDaddy on Thursday officially came out against the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), basically arguing that the bill is currently too polarizing.
“GoDaddy opposes SOPA because the legislation has not fulfilled its basic requirement to build a consensus among stake-holders in the technology and Internet communities,” CEO Warren Adelman said in a statement.
GoDaddy previously withdrew its support for SOPA but said it would support the legislation “when and if the Internet community supports it.” Now, the company has officially opposes SOPA as well as similar legislation in the Senate known as the PROTECT IP Act. SOURCE
So, let the games begin, transferring a domain is NOT a labor intensive action!
Actually, I favor such a coordinated blackout as a form of protest.
As a teacher, I full well know what such a blackout would mean to students. They wouldn’t be able to schedule SAT testing, send in college applications, etc. No better way to get the ignorant to understand that SOPA itself is a grave danger to freedom.
Also, others would be impacted. For example, how would I renew my vehicle registration? All the DMV offices would be packed.
The only way to get Americans to wake the hell up is to make them suffer — and with a suffering that is immediate and apparent.