Even coming from a stance of neutrality, the time to be political is when your existence is threatened.
The only reason why Wikipedia's existence might not be threatened by the bill is because they're just too popular. Those behind SOPA know that if they enforced it against a site like Wikipedia it would reveal it as the flawed piece of legislation it is. Instead they will nab smaller time websites for infringements because people won't care as much.
In a way, SOPA might be good for the Facebooks and the Wikipedias because they will never get shutdown, but their competitors might. I guess this is contradictory to my first sentence, but I don't believe in relying on "too big to fail" for existence.
A true blackout would be hellish: I don't know that there's a day that goes by that I don't read something on Wikipedia (which is the point, of course).
A simple, but effective, solution would be to simply change the site's style to draw all article text with a black background, a la redacted documents.
If this was done, users could still manually highlight using their browsers to view the text (and screen readers would still work just fine), but the effect would be still be striking, to say the least.
I think an action similar to what BoingBoing did on internet censorship day might be good. On the a user's first visit of the day, a popup stops the visit, saying "This site has been blocked. Not really, but under SOPA it could be.", with an OK to continue. The same thing on google would really make a stir.
I don't think people really understand the ramifications of the law, and an example that affected them would do wonders for everyday internet users, with a side effect of drumming up needed media attention.
This could be Wikipedia's most effective "personal appeal" they've ever run, just for the above reason.
"A true blackout would be hellish: I don't know that there's a day that goes by that I don't read something on Wikipedia (which is the point, of course)."
I think a blackout would highlight just how many people rely on Wikipedia and might bring to light that they wouldn't mind donating a few dollars a year to keep it around.
A similar protest was adopted in Australia against the Internet filter, look up "australia filter blackout".
Sadly, it failed as ISPs are now censoring 'voluntarily' by forcing it onto their customers [0][1], and the government is funding them. Amazingly, many Australians don't know that Australia's internet is censored now.
According to some comments on the Jimbo's talk page where the Support/Oppose poll is taking place, the italian wiki had the article's view-source wikitext visible for a few seconds before redirecting to a anti-legislation page.
I really hope they do this. There are few things that will get Americans' attention; this one might (Google not working for a day might, too, but that isn't going to happen).
Of course, the fear-mongers would probably just accuse Wikipedia of being terrorist and pirate sympathizers.
And even if people cared, would that actually affect the legislative process? I'm not hopeful.
If Wikipedia goes down, all the media will start reporting it. And then reporting on SOPA. And I do really think that that sort of action (if the media do some research on why the action is being done) can have an impact on the legislator.
I love this idea and fully support it, but a possibly unintended side effect would be reporting of this event taking a turn towards: "Holy crap, we all rely a lot on Wikipedia! Who are these people who run this global resource, anyway? Can we trust them? Should this sort of information source be regulated for the sake of the public good? Should it even be possible for these unaccountable people to pull such an important site from the internet without any oversight?! We need more laws!"
This will never make it past the wikilawyers running the US version. They live to find reasons to shoot down anything anybody proposes, even if they acknowledge that thing is ultimately right and beneficial. WP:IGNORE and WP:BURO essentially do not exist for many editors. (In many cases, this ready-fire-aim mindset is actually beneficial, because a lot of people have a lot of bad ideas that should be summarily rejected. But it gets in your way whether or not you're not an idiot.)
If they do it during the upcoming/in-progress finals season... god help us all. On one hand, it would cause the biggest effect, but it would also be mainly reaching people who are not known to vote in large numbers.
Shifting the opinion of normal voters probably won't matter; they tend to have strong, pre-existing loyalties and SOPA is unlikely to change them. But motivating a group that tends not to vote completely upsets the balance of power in the US even if its still just a minority of that group.
If it's bread and circuses that keep our less aware, equally voting brothers and sisters sated and deaf to our call to action, then perhaps a little less of each is exactly the prescription. I think wikipedia has been both bread and circus to us all, at work and home. If I was asked by a less technical friend what it meant to see a black wikipedia, I would feel it had worked well and I would finish opening their eyes. And I would feel proud to have helped.
It would be very inconvenient for the entire world but I totally support it, and I hope it happens soon because it would send a very powerful message to many people around the world about bills like SOPA.
(It will inconvenience me, yes. That's the entire point -- it's the sole message that is likely to reach the masses, clearly. Do it, please!
At the risk of diluting my message, I'll further argue that this is what we need more of: Take away those "gifts" of technology from those who would pervert it. There's "no law" saying that the technorati have to support such morons. At least, not to my knowledge, not in the U.S. -- yet.)
A blackout is not meant to attract the attention of the powers that be. A blackout is meant to attract the attention of the users. Wikipedia's users will say no such thing.
Within hours (minutes? seconds?) of a Wikipedia shutdown, someone else will have a duplicate up and running, touting reliability and "we don't play political games".
(Sure, after a week or so it might find its way to the same Google ranks as About.com's existing Wikipedia clone. But by then the message has been delivered.)
This could have some adverse effects in SERPs. Google? Matt Cutts? What could Wikipedia, or other sites looking to contribute to this cause with a unavailable site, do to not hurt their position in search? 503 Status-Code? Worthwhile to include a Retry-After header?
Even if it does, caring about what position of the first page you're on is a little less important that caring about whether you're going to be around in a year.
It's not enough to oppose SOPA, we need laws that explicitly prohibit the bad parts. Some things need to be fenced off or the animals will ruin it, and make no mistake, if SOPA fails they'll try again and again until they reach a maximum. The only way to prevent this from happening again (and make no mistake, they already have backup plans) is to prohibit it.
The 1st Amendment was enough for the Supreme Court to knock down 1989's Flag Desecration Act (US vs. Eichman, 1990), parts of 1994's Communications Decency Act (Reno vs. ACLU, 1997), 1998's COPA (Mukasey vs. ACLU, through 2009) and 2002's McCain-Feingold (Citizens United, through 2010) as unfairly restrictive of free speech. Congress passes lots of dumb speech-restricting laws that eventually get knocked down.
When these DNS-delisting enforcement operations – those from either before or hypothetically after SOPA might pass – finally get real, full-stack court review, they could very well wind up judicially prohibited as unconstitutional. It just takes a while.
Which is exactly the thing that should be legislated up front. There's no need to spend decades waiting for a good case to challenge bad law. I shudder to think about "oh, we'll just work it out in the courts" before the law is even passed.
There are no 'equal exposure' laws in the USA for websites or any other media. There once was an FCC 'fairness doctrine' – a regulatory policy but not legislative law – which was set aside 24 years ago:
Aha, yes, I had conflated that in my mind with the late 'fairness doctrine'. Thanks for the correcting pointer.
Looks like the equal-time rule specifically triggers when one candidate is given free time on TV/radio (that doesn't fall under certain news/documentary exceptions). So even on TV/radio, a 'blackout', rather than favoring any one candidate, would be OK.
I suppose there could be campaign finance rules that come into play in some cases – if time/space was considered a undeclared donation. There was some noise about this with regard to the FEC and political bloggers in past US election cycles.
Well, it'll have to be for a long time for it to be REALLY inconvenient. Google's cache will still allow you to access some of its content, what may be enough for some people.
Since SOPA could be used to take all of Wikipedia down because some single user posted something in violation of copyright, I think it's appropriate for Wikipedia to advocate this. If it were any issue that didn't fly directly in the face of Wikipedia's ability to run I would agree with you.
I have mixed feelings about this idea. SOPA is awful, but political neutrality is an important principle.
Perhaps formal neutrality could be maintained by simply offering an awareness banner: replace the fundraising insert with informational links to both pro- and anti-SOPA websites. The readers will be able to figure out the right position, for their own interests. (Perhaps, even, any pro-SOPA site would be toppled by the natural clickthrough traffic.)
Even if a protest displaces the fundraising banners for a day or more, the added attention to Wikipedia might boost the overall fundraiser.
SOPA is awful, but political neutrality is an important principle.
When a law threatens the existence of your organization as we know it, what else are you supposed to do? Would you rather have:
a) a completely politically neutral organization that has silently been neutered such that it cannot fulfill its mission
b) a mostly politically neutral organization that only expresses political views when the issue directly impacts their ability to fulfill their mission
The readers will be able to figure out the right position, for their own interests.
I don't think the problem here is whether people would be able to make up their mind if they had all the facts. The problem is that this issue has not received enough media attention and as a result very few people are even aware of it, let alone aware of its repercussions.
National media outlets certainly have a reason to avoid coverage of this issue since most of their parent companies support this legislation.
Some roles are not 'neutered' by their commitment to various standards of neutrality, but strengthened by it.
Many journalistic organizations forbid their reporters from making political donations, or holding shares in companies on which they report. This is considered a good thing.
Public defenders take on clients without regard to the heinousness of their alleged crimes or the attorney's personal opinions of the defendant. This is also considered a good thing.
I don't think SOPA even in its worst form would actually 'neuter' Wikipedia. In particular, if the US government ever did censor Wikipedia with force of law, that would generate even more sympathy and uproar than a merely simulated blackout. And that might be the necessary test case to get the SOPA law struck down (by the courts) or repealed (by a later Congress).
That is, I don't think you can be sure that dropping one principle (political neutrality) in a dramatic gesture now will be better for the stated goal (defeating legalized censorship) than just diligently continuing to be a principled, NPOV source of reliable information.
Certain activists-by-temperament always want to politicize everything – "you're with us or against us, solidarity, unity, this issue is so important everyone must take sides!"
But society can often be more robust against injustice and oppression when some key institutions zealously cherish their duties of neutrality, and stay above the dirty business of politics, without applying any self-interest calculations.
It's funny. You hold a very positive view of the people of this country. I sincerely believe that if SOPA passes and Wikipedia is taken down* that American citizens will bend over and take it. They'll cry and be sad, but they. will. do. nothing.
* Wikipedia probably won't go down. It's probably too big to fall. If a just looked at exactly what the law said and completely disregarded their reputation, they would take it down, but that probably won't happen. And, this is under the assumption that RIAA lawyers would even dare go against Wikipedia. If they think they're God, they might.
>I have mixed feelings about this idea. SOPA is awful, but political neutrality is an important principle.
I have a hard time seeing why "political neutrality" is ever an important principle, but especially in this case, Wikipedia would be acting in what it considers to be it's own self-interest. What merits are there in any entity remaining "neutral" in circumstances like that?
It sounds like you have an activist/politicking mentality. That's fine, but it's not for everyone or every institution. One of Wikipedia's pillars, "written from a neutral point-of-view" (NPOV), considers neutrality (including about political controversies) an important principle.
Political neutrality is also considered a good thing for judges, various public officials, and many journalists. If you have a diversity of strong political opinions in your family or workplace, keeping the shared spaces/events/organizations politically neutral is also usually a good idea.
Judges, public officials and many journalists are politically neutral on many if not most issues but that doesn't mean that they are and should be politically neutral on any issue.
If something threatens the basic rules our society is build upon such as the constitution of the country you live in or human rights, as I believe SOPA does, political neutrality stops being worth maintaining, in fact I think it is actively harmful.
If SOPA passed, and then either some copyright-holder or prosecutor tried to use it against Wikipedia – then opposing that action would be a 'defense'. This is specific preemptive WP:ADVOCACY.
And as bad as SOPA is, there are many worse laws proposed or existing around the world. Should every Wikipedia in countries that already have far worse free-speech laws be constantly blinking out in intermittent protest, once this threshold for 'stop-the-service' activism is set?
That is an unnecessarily and unjustifiably limited definition of defense. The mere proposal of legislation is an attack. "WP:ADVOCACY" is not a convincing argument for that viewpoint. Furthermore, defense can certainly be preemptive, so we have multiple levels of 'wrong' here.
" Should every Wikipedia in countries that already have far worse free-speech laws be constantly blinking out in intermittent protest, once this threshold for 'stop-the-service' activism is set?"
Arguably, yes. They should always do this in response to legislation that so directly effects them. Doing it after the fact is obviously of much more limited utility.
The only reason why Wikipedia's existence might not be threatened by the bill is because they're just too popular. Those behind SOPA know that if they enforced it against a site like Wikipedia it would reveal it as the flawed piece of legislation it is. Instead they will nab smaller time websites for infringements because people won't care as much.
In a way, SOPA might be good for the Facebooks and the Wikipedias because they will never get shutdown, but their competitors might. I guess this is contradictory to my first sentence, but I don't believe in relying on "too big to fail" for existence.