psybelle

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

... 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?

GoDaddy changed its mind about supporting SOPA... Bad PR (or at least *more* of it) and the rush of folks ditching for companies opposed to the blacklist bill well in advance of the proposed 12/29 date to leave GoDaddy probably had a little bit to do with that.


There are still many companies that support the bill (Wednesday's list is here, hasn't been updated to reflect GoDaddy's shift), and some of them might be "too big to boycott" (as JP Barlow put it)... but none of them are too big to completely ignore public opinion.

Personally, I don't think Mastercard and Visa are too big to boycott, at least in part... I don't know about you all, but I own too much damn plastic and am in the process of slowly cutting back to one "emergency card" and maybe one "daily use" card (and, no, I don't use all the plastic I own - it's another reason I'm cutting back). I'll happily write a letter to both behemoths stating that I'm cutting back in part because of the irregularities in the banking industry over the last couple of years (several of my card-issuing banks have been implicated in unsavory dealings), but that their support of a bill that will actually make the internet less secure is hastening my process of weaning myself off the use of plastic entirely.

I may or may not send polite and slightly puzzled letters to the cosmetics companies on that list, asking why they're supporting bad internet legislation... But I'm not a heavy customer of any of them, don't feel that "threatening to leave forever" is particularly useful.