Nonagon wrote:I believe the point of the blackout is to raise awareness. The point isn't to "hurt the government". It's to get citizens to get upset with these bills and contact their technologically inept representatives and tell them that they're upset and these bills shouldn't pass. The bills aren't meant to "shut down the internet". That's not the point. Congress isn't sitting around cackling about how we "played into their hands".
"MUAHAHAHA, THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT WE WANTED! NOW NOBODY CAN READ FUNNY JOKES ON REDDIT!"
No. That's stupid.
SOPA and PIPA were designed to stop piracy, but they are so poorly written it can lead to super creepy levels of internet censorship. But the problem is, right now, congress is putting their fingers in their ears and go "LALALA I DON'T UNDERSTAND THE INTERNET, YOU'RE ALL WRONG" when experts speak about how this can threaten free speech and the stability of the internet itself. They may not listen to the experts, but they just might listen to thousands of their constituents. That is, if their ears aren't stuffed with dollar bills.
WeeMadHamish wrote:The point is to inconvenience people and in doing so raise awareness. The average American is not going to give a crap unless they are personally inconvenienced.
AJ Quick wrote:I'm sorry but you really don't understand the point.
Yes the point of the blackouts is to raise awareness. But what is the point of SOPA? to block and shut down sites that display copyrighted materials. So which sites participate in the blackout? THOSE SITES. So then SOPA wins. The very sites they are targeting block themselves.
Sorry to tell you Nonagon, but they ARE sitting around cackling about how we "played into their hands".
Makes me think back to the "day without immigrants" protest they did in Atlanta a few months ago. They claimed it was to show the government how bad it would be without them. So they all closed their shops for a day.
Result? People went to other stores to buy what they needed. The immigrants lost a days worth of income. One store owner even lost his store to an electrical fire, which had someone been there they could have stopped the fire sooner and saved the store. The government didn't look or think twice about it, but still collected their taxes for the day.
In short they cut off their nose to spite their face.
I really do understand the point of the blackouts is to raise awareness. But they should not be total blackouts. GBfans and a few other sites have done it the best way. People log on and see the splash page and it gets their attention.