The Great Internet Blackout...

The Great Internet Blackout...

I guess this is one for the day, because while I support the black out in an attempt to get awareness of a serious issue out there, it seems like a lot of sites are just using the blackout as a means to market and plug their own site.

For example, take a look at the social media today DOT com. I'm not sure if this will last for long, or even past today, but they have blacked out their website.. specially at a point where they give you tips on how to browse wikipedia DOT ORG without the blackout.



That somehow seems counter productive to the cause. But maybe that's just me. In fact, a lot of places are running with this story of how exactly to get around Wikipedia's blackout. As if, you know, they still want to look up misinformation for their term papers but at the same time support said cause.

Those wondering how to get around the Wikipedia SOPA blackout can breathe a little easier: the crowd-sourced encyclopedia is still available through mobile versions, disabling Javascript or translating another language's version of it.

So really folks, there's no need to panic. You can still look up every little curiosity that crosses your mind if you try to following options (it helps if you have a smartphone or tablet):

Then again, Wikipedia gives directions on its own page on how to get around the blackout. So really, it's just sort of odd to see how a protest movement like this could just be created to make a statement, and then you can completely ignore the statement as anything more than just a minor inconvenience. Isn't this cause a bit more important that it could get a week's worth of blacking out. You know, to show what exactly is at risk.

Or perhaps that's why these sort of movements may work on paper or may delay it for a while, but in the end, it's still going to come. Big lobbyist money is still pouring in left and right against the cause and seeing as how the internet can't be bothered to do it for more than 12 hours, it seems like people just don't give a shit about it enough to sacrifice their convenience for the cause. Even if they already know the well advertised methods around it.



Then again, I'd imagine that a longer black out would cause a real loss in network traffic and that wouldn't make the website much money. Even if you could get around it by some little net hacking tricks. But the fact that I'm seeing this used as a marketing ploy is just all sorts of disturbing when I think about it.

Not to mention when I see people actually call the internet being on "strike". Why yes, an organization doing a thing that will cost them virtually nothing at no risk to anyone is far from what I would consider being on strike. The idea of a strike moving away from something that humans are doing to protest and enact change to something a corporation is doing to white knight for the people, but mostly protecting itself sort of scares me.



Mind you, not as bad as the fact that our government is trying to censor free speech because a bunch of intellectual property owners are losing a couple of bucks here and there due to piracy, but still, this whole thing scares me.

But hey, at least it's getting the message across to those who aren't aware of it..... oh what the fuck! Come on people, you can't be THIS stupid..

DaynaDelmastro Dayna Delmastro

Aight so congress is fuckig retarded? What the fuck do i do without google and wikipedia before midterms?

legaedtke luke gaedtke

Anybody want to explain in real people words what this SOPA thing is all about? I would just Wikipedia it but it is shut down... #confused

58 minutes ago

Zoe_Bentham zo bentham

But seriously, what's SOPA and why is Wikipedia gone? #confused

_dumbobee ♐Fuck You All

OMG I WANNA DO ENGLISH ISU BUT WIKIPEDIA ISNT WORKING :@@@@@@@@@@@@@
FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU

teebixtches Tiara Rosa-Lyn Oki

#wikipedia used to be my nigga, but fuck him

Riltoro Rilwan Toro

What the Fuck is SOPA and why are they trying to mess with Wikipedia

BeliebInCady Hooligan & Belieber♛

WIKIPEDIA IS PISSING ME OFF. IM TRYING TO LOOK SOMETHING UP YOU GAY ASS CUNTS

Oh, and on a comical note. I noticed that Demonoid took part of this SOPA blackout. Which is sort of odd considering the nature of the website. You see, I thought the point of the protest is that SOPA would censor legitimate websites while at the same time do nothing to prevent piracy. So isn't Demonoid shutting down for the day actually supporting SOPA then?