followed the trail of breadcrumbs back to reddit...

... and found this: Black March. Many thanks to nighean_isis for the headsup!


I'm in, with small caveats... One suggestion was to buy content (if you must) only from independent retailers/creators who opposed SOPA/PIPA, but avoid Big Industry entertainments. My neighborhood indie bookstore will be the only place I'll shop for books and such, and I'll only be buying used media for the month... (Not that it would be a hardship for me to go completely without for the month. But I like supporting independent retailers, and this is one way of doing that.)


I know there are independent creators who actually support those bills in spite of the legislation being poorly written, badly aimed and utterly ineffective. The question I'd love to ask, if I was speaking to them, is: Which way do you lose more business? Through "piracy" or through people like me who are adamantly against censorship (and the presumption of guilt, and punishment without trial) and shop by our ethics?

last one for a bit...

... I do need to spend a few hours at work...

I took a look at #blackmarch, just out of curiosity. I am entertained by the split between "Hell, yes/They don't get to wreck the intarwebs for their money!" and "why don't we just pay for [some specific subset of content]" - those all seem to be from male handles. I guess they haven't seen the comparisons between what Big Media has been doing and an "increasingly dysfunctional relationship"... I wonder how long it would take for them to dump a date who treated them this badly (and how vocal they'd be about that process)?

last link of the evening...

This one's important - it's a review of sorts of the anti-SOPA/PIPA campaign (and a small slice of history). What worked, some of how/why it worked, what the surprises were, what might be good ideas for next time. Because there will be a next time...

http://dashes.com/anil/2012/01/the-history-and-future-of-web-protest.html