Wikipedia's blackout effort sends the wrong message.
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The fact that the black-screen-of-protest can so easily be circumvented sends out a message that I'm sure SOPA/PIPA supporters will use. Namely
"It doesn't matter if the odd site gets taken down those clever internet users will find a way to continue working."
I didn't even see the message until I deliberately turned off NoScript so that I could see what they had done. For protests of this type to be effective, they must be real. Difficult for a commercial organization to justify for money many reasons but for a Not For Profit outfit like Wiki they should have really gone dark.
Henry Minute Do not read medical books! You could die of a misprint. - Mark Twain Girl: (staring) "Why do you need an icy cucumber?" “I want to report a fraud. The government is lying to us all.” I wouldn't let CG touch my Abacus! When you're wrestling a gorilla, you don't stop when you're tired, you stop when the gorilla is.
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The fact that the black-screen-of-protest can so easily be circumvented sends out a message that I'm sure SOPA/PIPA supporters will use. Namely
"It doesn't matter if the odd site gets taken down those clever internet users will find a way to continue working."
I didn't even see the message until I deliberately turned off NoScript so that I could see what they had done. For protests of this type to be effective, they must be real. Difficult for a commercial organization to justify for money many reasons but for a Not For Profit outfit like Wiki they should have really gone dark.
Henry Minute Do not read medical books! You could die of a misprint. - Mark Twain Girl: (staring) "Why do you need an icy cucumber?" “I want to report a fraud. The government is lying to us all.” I wouldn't let CG touch my Abacus! When you're wrestling a gorilla, you don't stop when you're tired, you stop when the gorilla is.
Complete rubbish. This protest is not aimed at the internet savvy, rather the millions of regular Joes that use Wikipedia on a daily basis who probably don't even know what SOPA is. The fact that you even *use* NoScript suggests you are aware of internet security risks, and by extension are probably informed about the e-world. I'm gonna guess you're opposed to SOPA - oh look, job done. Wiki's protest is not for you. By making the blackout easily circumventable, Wikipedia have made sure they reach exactly the right audience, without overly inconveniencing the people who need no further information. Geeks, these days, are but a tiny portion of the internet. Stop assuming everyone is you.
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The fact that the black-screen-of-protest can so easily be circumvented sends out a message that I'm sure SOPA/PIPA supporters will use. Namely
"It doesn't matter if the odd site gets taken down those clever internet users will find a way to continue working."
I didn't even see the message until I deliberately turned off NoScript so that I could see what they had done. For protests of this type to be effective, they must be real. Difficult for a commercial organization to justify for money many reasons but for a Not For Profit outfit like Wiki they should have really gone dark.
Henry Minute Do not read medical books! You could die of a misprint. - Mark Twain Girl: (staring) "Why do you need an icy cucumber?" “I want to report a fraud. The government is lying to us all.” I wouldn't let CG touch my Abacus! When you're wrestling a gorilla, you don't stop when you're tired, you stop when the gorilla is.
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The fact that the black-screen-of-protest can so easily be circumvented sends out a message that I'm sure SOPA/PIPA supporters will use. Namely
"It doesn't matter if the odd site gets taken down those clever internet users will find a way to continue working."
I didn't even see the message until I deliberately turned off NoScript so that I could see what they had done. For protests of this type to be effective, they must be real. Difficult for a commercial organization to justify for money many reasons but for a Not For Profit outfit like Wiki they should have really gone dark.
Henry Minute Do not read medical books! You could die of a misprint. - Mark Twain Girl: (staring) "Why do you need an icy cucumber?" “I want to report a fraud. The government is lying to us all.” I wouldn't let CG touch my Abacus! When you're wrestling a gorilla, you don't stop when you're tired, you stop when the gorilla is.
A few people in this thread have said it already but the wiki protest wasn't for the likes of us. It was for Joe Soap. Joe Soap who if he knew what Javascript was, you can be damn sure he'd have to Google "How to turn off javascript in Internet Explorer". The long and short of it IMO. Also as stated by a few other people too, said civilian would then get such a nasty surprise when they tried to go to Facebook, Gmail...etc after doing as much. In fact, this has to be the most disruptive way of protesting, essentially forcing the client side to accidentally blackout their own internet.
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At least they have it circumventable. I have run up against a few pages which are entirely blacked out for this protest. Yes there is that briefest of brief seconds between the load and the "We are protesting!" page, but I'm not quite fast enough to hit escape during the millisecond required. This protest is all well and good, but some of us have WORK to get done. I propose a counter protest. Any site which has the protest up which does not make an alternative available for those of us who need to get things done, get boycotted from now until forever. :mad: Flippin idiots.
There is an alternative: books. Let's just hope they don't pass (more) laws banning those too. Also, if you use a resource frequently enough that your day to day job can't be done in the absence of it, make a pdf. Unrelated: remember the good ol' days when you could just download MSDN?
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The fact that the black-screen-of-protest can so easily be circumvented sends out a message that I'm sure SOPA/PIPA supporters will use. Namely
"It doesn't matter if the odd site gets taken down those clever internet users will find a way to continue working."
I didn't even see the message until I deliberately turned off NoScript so that I could see what they had done. For protests of this type to be effective, they must be real. Difficult for a commercial organization to justify for money many reasons but for a Not For Profit outfit like Wiki they should have really gone dark.
Henry Minute Do not read medical books! You could die of a misprint. - Mark Twain Girl: (staring) "Why do you need an icy cucumber?" “I want to report a fraud. The government is lying to us all.” I wouldn't let CG touch my Abacus! When you're wrestling a gorilla, you don't stop when you're tired, you stop when the gorilla is.
And that is exactly why SOPA is such a bad idea. It won't work. It will cause more problems to the average (presumably law abiding) user than to those who ignore the laws. To the determined, the law simply won't work. In the meantime the bill as written could wipe Wikipedia out for the vast majority of users. This is all to say nothing of the stretching of US powers. Now I am not a supporter of eliminating our sovereignty. But we don't have rights to take down DNS operations for those outside our borders. And the international community would be completely in line complaining if we started doing so. So I believe you are completely wrong. The message was sent and received. A number of people in congress withdrew their support. Even the rumor of the outage caused Obama to come out against this.
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At least they have it circumventable. I have run up against a few pages which are entirely blacked out for this protest. Yes there is that briefest of brief seconds between the load and the "We are protesting!" page, but I'm not quite fast enough to hit escape during the millisecond required. This protest is all well and good, but some of us have WORK to get done. I propose a counter protest. Any site which has the protest up which does not make an alternative available for those of us who need to get things done, get boycotted from now until forever. :mad: Flippin idiots.
While I admit that I haven't read the legislation (I've got better things to do) I supported the protest based on my general libertarian stance. But I do agree with you that work still needs to be done. And the website nonsense is a litle annoying.
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The title of your post sends the wrong message. The US congress sends the wrong message. The corporate elite monopolists and propagandists for fascism send the wrong message. Wikipedia sent the RIGHT message, and it was a phenomenal success. Now go crawl back into your mincing, chicken-necked little hole.
Good grief. God, go back to your Occupy protest please.
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And that is exactly why SOPA is such a bad idea. It won't work. It will cause more problems to the average (presumably law abiding) user than to those who ignore the laws. To the determined, the law simply won't work. In the meantime the bill as written could wipe Wikipedia out for the vast majority of users. This is all to say nothing of the stretching of US powers. Now I am not a supporter of eliminating our sovereignty. But we don't have rights to take down DNS operations for those outside our borders. And the international community would be completely in line complaining if we started doing so. So I believe you are completely wrong. The message was sent and received. A number of people in congress withdrew their support. Even the rumor of the outage caused Obama to come out against this.
Interesting. Does not communist China (for one) regulate Internet communications in and out of their country? And I am sure they are not the only ones.
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And that is exactly why SOPA is such a bad idea. It won't work. It will cause more problems to the average (presumably law abiding) user than to those who ignore the laws. To the determined, the law simply won't work. In the meantime the bill as written could wipe Wikipedia out for the vast majority of users. This is all to say nothing of the stretching of US powers. Now I am not a supporter of eliminating our sovereignty. But we don't have rights to take down DNS operations for those outside our borders. And the international community would be completely in line complaining if we started doing so. So I believe you are completely wrong. The message was sent and received. A number of people in congress withdrew their support. Even the rumor of the outage caused Obama to come out against this.
Funny that a site where the contributions of information come from the populace of the world can simply, at any time, keep that information from the populace of the world. Govt watchdogging is all well and good but who is watching the watchdogs? :)
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There is an alternative: books. Let's just hope they don't pass (more) laws banning those too. Also, if you use a resource frequently enough that your day to day job can't be done in the absence of it, make a pdf. Unrelated: remember the good ol' days when you could just download MSDN?
I just download MSDN using some type of tool like HTTrack copier. I even downloaded full rotor source. (each .cs is one html page).
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The fact that the black-screen-of-protest can so easily be circumvented sends out a message that I'm sure SOPA/PIPA supporters will use. Namely
"It doesn't matter if the odd site gets taken down those clever internet users will find a way to continue working."
I didn't even see the message until I deliberately turned off NoScript so that I could see what they had done. For protests of this type to be effective, they must be real. Difficult for a commercial organization to justify for money many reasons but for a Not For Profit outfit like Wiki they should have really gone dark.
Henry Minute Do not read medical books! You could die of a misprint. - Mark Twain Girl: (staring) "Why do you need an icy cucumber?" “I want to report a fraud. The government is lying to us all.” I wouldn't let CG touch my Abacus! When you're wrestling a gorilla, you don't stop when you're tired, you stop when the gorilla is.
Wait. What? You think the lamebrains who came up with the idea for this legislation would know how to get around it? Even if told? Why that would make you a terrorist and we have ways to make you talk and there are a whole different set of laws to deal with that.
Psychosis at 10 Film at 11 Those who do not remember the past, are doomed to repeat it. Those who do not remember the past, cannot build upon it.
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I'm from the U.K. not the U.S. but we're concerned about this too as it has global implications. All this talk about disabling non U.S. websites at a DNS level could mess up the whole DNS system and damage the internet as a whole So any kind of protest is welcome as far as I am concerned. BTW How can I protest (or any non U.S. Citizen for that matter)
That's my thought exactly. It smacks of cultural imperialism to legislate to introduce a law that affects more than your own country. Such an action should require approval of the UN General Assembly.
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Interesting. Does not communist China (for one) regulate Internet communications in and out of their country? And I am sure they are not the only ones.
Indeed they do, but the US is determined to outdo even China, by applying such restrictions to the entire world rather than just the US. It makes it seem very hypocritical when they criticise countries around the world for restricting access to the internet. The argument that its not the government who chooses, but the copyright holders doesn't wash, as the government is largely owned by big business anyway.
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Funny that a site where the contributions of information come from the populace of the world can simply, at any time, keep that information from the populace of the world. Govt watchdogging is all well and good but who is watching the watchdogs? :)
I think that was intentional - they're trying to give a taste of what the internet may be like if this stupid legislation goes through.
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The fact that the black-screen-of-protest can so easily be circumvented sends out a message that I'm sure SOPA/PIPA supporters will use. Namely
"It doesn't matter if the odd site gets taken down those clever internet users will find a way to continue working."
I didn't even see the message until I deliberately turned off NoScript so that I could see what they had done. For protests of this type to be effective, they must be real. Difficult for a commercial organization to justify for money many reasons but for a Not For Profit outfit like Wiki they should have really gone dark.
Henry Minute Do not read medical books! You could die of a misprint. - Mark Twain Girl: (staring) "Why do you need an icy cucumber?" “I want to report a fraud. The government is lying to us all.” I wouldn't let CG touch my Abacus! When you're wrestling a gorilla, you don't stop when you're tired, you stop when the gorilla is.
I don't think so. They weren't trying to force anyone to do anything nor really block people out. They were trying to raise awareness, get people to see these bills Congress was trying to slip through for Murdoch & Co., that would bypass due process and allow them to take down entire domains based on allegations of copyright infringement or if they linked to someone that was suspected, much like a patriot act against copyright infringement, immunizing ISPs from invasion of privacy and suppressing freedom of speech, and the burden would be on the small blog owner to prove the ISP intentionally violating their rights to press charges. They are horrible bills and the fact that Congress was going to pass them for their Hollywood and recording industry lobbyists after a $95M lobby effort without even understanding them is fricken insane. There are already laws and processes for copyright infringement. This was to get rid of the burden of proof and take people down on suspicions and allegations, which is always bad. Wikipedia blackout wasn't "bypassed", their page clearly told you how to do it and that they were not trying to block you completely, just raise awareness.
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It isn't just wikipedia doing this. I haven't even looked at Wikipedia to be honest. I've been looking at secure (non-photocopiable) barcode generation of all things and the first three sites I tried were blacked out. Yes I would have loved to do this yesterday but I got the documentation this morning and I have a call about it later today. Just here to rant.
Well, the point was that many of the blacked out sites were trying to show what it would be like without them or things like them. Those bills directly threatened people's ability to make information available, since hollywood and RIAA could take them down by posting a few links and making allegations. Even without links the burden of proof and due process would be removed, and little companies don't have the team of lawyers to fight them and eventually get their website back. Copyright troll heaven is what they were trying to create, locking and jacking up the cost of information for everyone. If any sites you really like were affected, it's a wake up call to watch Congress closely, since they can't agree on anything for the people, but give them a few million and they'll pass anything they don't understand without our watchful eye.
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They could at least disabled search optimization... Annoing to waist your time going to a site that says it has info and then get a crappy message. There can always be another wikipedia... They aren't all that. I feel that they were being arrogant in there statement they were trying to make.... "We're wiki and we're so great". Maybe they forgot that it is the people that puts their time and effort into putting the knowledge up. My 2cents... Maybee little harsh and all.
"Program testing can be used to show the presence of bugs, but never to show their absence." << please vote!! >>
They were protecting themselves and all sites like them. If they hadn't taken a stand, we couldn't have a wikipedia without the stamp and approval of MPAA and RIAA and Murdoch crony approval. I hardly appreciated them before now I realize, and if anyone bothered to read their statement they gave you multiple ways around the blackout explaining they were not trying to really block you, just raise awareness to these bills that I consider corporate fascism at it's finest, right under everyone's noses. Later Congress is surprised that people cared about these "innocuous" bills they apparently didn't' even understand. I bet the lobbyists putting words in their hands understood them. It just bugs me they waste months blocking each other's bills to help real people with payroll tax extensions from even being heard until the last minute and some big execs hand them a mandate and both houses and parties have bills out the door as soon as the gates open for the session, as real problems kicked down the corner are not even addressed.
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That's my thought exactly. It smacks of cultural imperialism to legislate to introduce a law that affects more than your own country. Such an action should require approval of the UN General Assembly.
Quite I couldn't have put it better myself legislation with possible International effects should be dealt with Internationally.
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I think that was intentional - they're trying to give a taste of what the internet may be like if this stupid legislation goes through.