Brandthony

The very first thing I have to say is that I’m 125% behind the SOPA protests. It’s an awful bill and I hope it dies. That’s the point of my protest of the protests.

This protest is all talk & little action, much like Occupy Wall Street has seemingly been a hipster hangout/soup kitchen/outdoor festival. When I went it seemed like the demonstrators were more interested in entertaining me than educating me.

1. The Participating Sites Are A  Joke

Check out this roster of the internet elite:

2. Of the real name brand protestors, what are we accomplishing?

Reddit? Mozilla? MoveOn? FreePress? Talk about preaching to the choir.

Wikipedia is down for one day, big whoop. In this short attention span world, all it will take is another 24-hours to forget this 24-hour protest.

Wikipedia has the biggest opportunity to make an impact, but a 24-hour protest will do nothing but attract some headlines and occupy Twitter’s trending topics for a day. If Wiki really wants to make an impact, shut Wiki down indefinitely until the bills are killed. That may be drastic, but Wikipedia is the shortcut for the world to information they need. If that source is cut off, it’ll cause a shit storm.

Shit storms are motivating.

3. Google is a participant who isn’t participating.

Read what I wrote in the search box.

I’m so glad Google is so heavily backing this effort. Solidarity, brother.

Okay, maybe I shouldn’t be so hard on them. I mean, as a public company they do have to make a profit and those Google Ads aren’t going to click themselves. They have the right to do everything they can to be a profitable business, much like movie studio…oh.

Awkward.

4. I used 3 of the protestors to make this blog post happen.

I used the Google search bar on my Firefox browser to find the images to liven up this WordPress post.

Yeeeeeeeah.

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Look, I hate SOPA as much as the next guy. I want that bill to die. But this is all pomp and circumstance. Hopefully the protests are successful, but it’s honestly a weak effort.

I thought the Internet would try harder to save itself.

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Update

Apparently the blackouts are working, to some extent. I still stand by my post. We’re lucky that our government is filled with pushovers.

Additionally, here is a great presentation on what SOPA and PIPA actually are: