Will Google, Amazon, and Facebook Black Out the Net? (to protest SOPA)

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.

"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.”

FOX News Article

Oooooo a showdown. This is rather significant imo. If these major sites go through with a blackout can you imagine the possible implications that it could have? Would the US Government fold to the power of the Net's Elite? This is almost pay-per-view worthy.

I am sure an agreement will be met before a "virtual SHTF" scenario occurs so I am sure we can all rest easy, but it really would be neat to see the above on every one of the homepages of the aforementioned web giants.

This would never happen. Something drastic would have to come before it. I do not under stand why they want to stop piracy. It gives company's allot of exposer. %90 of what people download would not be bought in stores. Its only downloaded cause its free. Free advertizing in a way. Their will all ways be piracy (well as long as downloading content is illegal) just like their will all ways be drugs and prostitutes. No way around it, any thing can be hacked, cracked and uploaded untraced. THIS HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH PIRACY its about control. In fact VIACOM witch is a HUGE media company they own comedy central, mtv and allot more has been exposed making torrent sites and releasing torrent content so they can sue the people download it. Entrapment is against the law. They make millions suing people. Probably make more off suing then losses from piracy. (most people would not have bought the product in the first place)


This would be bad for google, amazon and facebook. No one would use their sites if this happened.

there is a lot more to internet than facebook, skype and all those new things on the net. There is a huge amount of other social networks around, like IRC, and wait until you discover the UnderNet .....

reply to post by Hellhound604


Indeed, I don't see how they plan to eliminate piracy on the net aside from getting rid of the net. They've exhausted so many campaigns in an attempt to thwart piracy, they've made examples periodically of people in the media enforcing piracy laws, all of which have been to no avail.

As long as they make movies, music, software, and most other forms of media and the internet is operational, there will indeed be a place to get it and people will indeed go get it.

Mind you I am not attempting to make this a blanket statement as I know that there are those that fully support anti-piracy and wouldn't dare download one bit of pirated information, none the less, a vast majority do and will provided the platforms are in place to do so.

facebook are bad guys already they are as much apart of political social engineering as fox news

reply to post by akapapasmurf


Perhaps, it does make me wonder though, will other Net Elite do the same in solidarity? I wonder if the site owners of ATS are going to be affected by this Bill in regards to current operation?

Yeah, I'm sure they will.

:rollseyes:

Did you not see the 2011 Bilderberg invitee list?

www.amazonsellercommunity.com...

They might do this, but then again all the RIAA and MPAA are doing is shooting themselves in the foot once again. What will happen is they are going to force site owners to simply stop hosting material produced by companies that will threaten their sites existence.

Better yet, I wonder what would happen if someone had proof that one of those organizations actually infringe upon other peoples copyright for their profit.

Could you imagine? They pass SOPA then a person comes along with proof of this and sues them all into bankruptcy. That would be irony at its finest.

I actually hope they do it.

I work in the web industry, and have already seen a client have an issue concerning copyright issues, which they lost the lawsuit and lost around a million with legal fees and the likes.

The case in question had to do with another company linking to their website who used pictures of a "certain person" on their website and made a false claim. My client contacted the owner of the site that had the picture, but they refused to take the link off their website to my clients website.

This "person" initially tried to sue the company which had the picture and made the false claim, and won the case, but since the company then filed for bankruptcy they did not have to pay the awarded amount. So the "person" picked on my clients site since there was a link to my clients website on the site that made the false claim.

Currently I do agree that the internet copyright laws do need to be a little more "black and white", but not to this extent. Site owners need to be protected, yes, but that protection needs to include everyone, not just those with "influence".

The way this works now, the only sites left will be sites with "influence" with the government.

Watch what happens, I promise you that somehow they will make it so that these larger sites, such as google, Amazon, Microsoft, and so on and so forth, will be exempt, but smaller sites and blogging sites will not be.

I don't trust any of the companies who are promoting the black out.
What if this is just a scheme to get more names of the "disgruntled"?
As soon as you send in a message to end SOPA to your government's office, your name never reaches him because it's intercepted by a different agency.
Hmmm....

Another big note about the copyright issue that most people aren't aware of is general open source programming.

For those that do not know, opensource programming language such as php, and linux operating system.

Without opensource programming, websites would be built using .net programming which is used with windows programs. In order to build programs in .net you are subject to the terms of "Microsoft licencing agreement" which can. (I do not know the entire agreement, as I do not use .net)

So if Microsoft came out with a specific function in their code, and (using a different code) an open source program made it so you could have this function free of charge on your website without having to pay microsoft, would that be a copyright issue? (I honestly do not know)

Will this "copyright law" target opensource portal system, such as this website was built in, because it has the same "style" as another website, or the same type of codes?

Just how far can and will this go?

Another interesting note, is why microsoft isn't fighting against this bill too. They are starting to lean more towards the internet (by taking codes from other websites), wouldn't the law effect them, or would it empower them?

With the new HTML5 becoming more popular, it could be interesting to see what happens in the future.

Facebook won't stand up to any laws enacted by Obama. FB is in Obama's back pocket. Which was made painfully obvious all those times in the past few years, that Obama has visited the FB HQ to further garner their support in his socialistic dreams.

reply to post by UberL33t


Go back to what Rockefeller said on C-Span about the Internet being a huge mistake.

Their disinfo only works if they control all the information. That is now broken beyond repair.