http://www.internetw...s.com/top20.htm
The American internet market is approximately the same size as the entirety of europe's.

Clearly if the website's didn't feel the legislation affected their sustainability they wouldn't be protesting. Is your inconvenience for 12 hours more important than the continued sustainability of your favorite websites?
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I'm not claiming that SOPA is a good good idea I am however pointing out that from a numbers point of view, and indeed impact on those drafting the bill point of view, these protests are going to do nowt because the larger majority are not impacted.

It would be like the train system in the UK going on strike and thus trains in the US also stopping. Their action serves no purpose other than causing trouble for those who would normally be using it, at least the UK action has some point to it. If they wanted these SOPA protests to be effective then they should have done what SOPA pretty much propsed to do; detect the country of origin and, if from the US, do the whole 'this is bad!' thing.

edit: also wikipedia haven't even bothered doing it properly... if you are going to shut down then shut down, don't just use some javascript to cover up the page which can be bypassed by turning off scripting... well done guys, well done... *slow clap*

edit: Being the second largest internet base in a single country with the largest already enforcing heavy restrictions on the internet, and the next largest being half as large makes any legislation very important to anybody with any interest in the sustainability internet technologies.
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Sure, on a country by country base the US is large, but when taken as a world as a whole the other 89% of the world would like to point out we can't do a damned thing and this simply acts as 24h when various things can't be done while we wait for the world to come back to normal.

I'm sure certain people and organisations will fight against it, but the question is, is it enough? There are a few things to consider here. One, is the person/organisation two-faced? Are they publicly fighting it, but privately accepting it? Two, is the person/organisation going to be exempted from it? (This could potentially lead to #1). Three, even if SOPA and PIPA are killed off, all it takes is for a much more gradual and stealthy introduction of portions of the bill to be introduced. Tie in internet censorship to a hurricane relief bill, tax reduction bill, etc. Don't introduce the full bill at once, but through time.

I guess I'm much more pessimistic about the outcome of this blackout than the rest of you (as I see internet censorship of this type as an eventuality of reality).

"Winning" means that the public pressure is so high that politicans seem urged to take it back. Which, and no offense intended, won't be the case if some geeks take down their website for a day and some other geeks make a few forum posts about how unhappy they are about it. Nobody really cares what you or I have to say.

"Winning" would be 100,000 angry people in the streets of Washington DC for three days because their preferred socializing website showed "closed for SOPA" for the last 3 weeks.[/quote]I don't think closing for three weeks would have that effect - either for Wikipedia or a social networking site - because people would just blame the website, not the politicians. The point is to raise awareness. No one is going to oppose SOPA purely because of the downtime itself, whether it's 1 day or 3 weeks.

You might get that effect if websites are shut down because the law is in place. I think both Wikipedia and social networking sites could have that effect. But it would be good to try to put some opposition in place before it gets that far...

"Winning" would also be if one or several major, high-profile sites on the scale of Slashdot, Amazon, or CNN shut down for a week, to show solidarism. Though of course we know this is not going to happen for business reasons.[/quote]You mock about "some geeks", and then you pick Slashdot as an example of "high profile"? Wikipedia is rated by Alexa at number 6; Amazon is number 9, CNN is 61, and Slashdot is 1717! I think you severely misunderestimate just how popular wikipedia is.

For US only, Amazon is number 5, ahead of Wikipedia at number 6. But CNN is still only at 18, and Slashdot at 1027.


ETA: And even for Reddit, at rank 115 (52 in the US), it beats Slashdot significantly.

Google also have information today I believe for US viewers (though I'm outside the US so can't verify).

And if your point is to say that 100,000 people on the streets is the best way to protest things - well firstly, if you know of a way to get that done, then feel free to do so (I don't think "ask Facebook to close for 3 weeks" will work, even if they did it). Secondly, I'm not sure it is true - at least in the UK, large protests such as against the Iraq war, or against cuts, don't change a Government's mind. And arguably there's a good reason - 100,000 people is still a minority of the population. So in that sense, it can be more effective to reach a large proportion of the population, even if they aren't out there protesting.

I do fear that we may not reach "step 4", but it is wrong to blame the website owners for not having the nerve.

In short as bad as I'm sure this is being in another country with no say on the matter I currently simply don't care and just have to live this with mild annoyance. A position most of the users in the world are in.

I keep reading all kinds of websites that are protesting by shutting down their sites for a day. How can you protest the idea that shutting websites down is bad, when you are shutting down your own website, which people may want/need to even use that day. So not only is this idea dumb in my opinion, you are also making your users angry. Why don't these people actually do something useful like write some letters or go talk to their representatives. Probably lose just as much in daily ads for your site that you could just keep it up, use the ad revenue to fly or maybe even just walk down the street, to talk to your representatives. (I'm talking about the big names people speaking out against it, not just poor regular internet users.)

I mean I get the idea: this is what could happen permanantely and not just one day, but shutting your website down does not actually do anything except hurt yourself. Like "I'm going to kill myself if you don't change your bill."

also wikipedia haven't even bothered doing it properly... if you are going to shut down then shut down, don't just use some javascript to cover up the page which can be bypassed by turning off scripting...*

You mock about "some geeks", and then you pick Slashdot [...] Wikipedia[/quote]Well, apologies for choosing Slashdot and Amazon as two of the first big multi-million-user sites that came to my mind, without consulting Alexa. Pick any other big site that's more important in your opinion (maybe not MSN, since they sure won't object to SOPA). Pick Facebook or Youtube if you will. Anything millions of people want to use every day.
I'm not considering (nor mocking!) Wikipedia at all, because the site is not shut down. Wikipedia, is perfectly readable for me, I couldn't tell whether it has been down for as much as an hour (or at all). There's a little header about SOPA where you usually find the "appeal from whoever it is" ad, and that's it. So what. I didn't even notice before I saw the thread here...

Insofar, yes, as far as it's shutting down, it is really at best a "few geeks" doing it. And no matter how high-minded their motives are, nobody will care about it. Not about the sites as such, and not about the duration.

If for example Amazon shut down for three weeks, it would seriously impact my life, I would actually have to leave my house... but it won't happen because Amazon likes to sell me stuff, and they won't like someone else selling that stuff in their place. If [font=courier new,courier,monospace]<insert your favorite newspaper>[/font] site shut down for 3 weeks, it would seriously annoy me and impact my life. Heck, I would actually have to read newspaper again (and leave the house to get one). But again, that won't happen, they're not crazy.

On the other hand, if Wikipedia shows a small header on top of the page, who cares? Even if some sites shut down completely for a day, so what? Can't visit Gamedev.net today? Get over it, there have been downtimes every now and then, come back tomorrow. A single day just doesn't cut it.

And if your point is to say that 100,000 people on the streets is the best way to protest things - well firstly, if you know of a way to get that done, then feel free to do so [...] Secondly, I'm not sure it is true[/quote]Ask the Greens. Seriously, the 180-degree turnaround stunt for nuclear power in Germany was achieved overnight by 100,000 people. Because, you know, 100,000 protestors (respectively 0.1%), represent the will of the entire population. Therefore, it's the right thing to do what the vast majority of 0.1% wants. Democracy works that way.

I do fear that we may not reach "step 4", but it is wrong to blame the website owners for not having the nerve.[/quote]I'm not blaming them, I'm just stating the fact. They will not (and in fact do not) have the nerve, nor the breath, for obvious and understandable reasons. It means a bad user experience at best, lost revenue and a threat to the site's existence at worst. No website can afford to shut down for a few weeks, it's economical suicide.

It would be like the train system in the UK going on strike and thus trains in the US also stopping.

the 180-degree turnaround stunt for nuclear power in Germany was achieved overnight by 100,000 people.[/quote]

No it wasn't.

Germany right now not only has vast surplus of electricity (more surplus than all nuclear facilities provide), it also has backup in neighboring countries ready to cover any shortage.

The nuclear angle was election point gathering. Given a choice, people prefer non-nuclear. Riding the Fukushima wave (pun intended) to victory.

Also, by sheer coincidence, coal powerplants will be built to replace nuclear power. The only "green" there is the color of money that changed hands.

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As for companies that chose to demonstrate vs. SOPA - they are the ones that have enough leverage to dictate direction.

All others - either uninformed, uninvolved, or desperate for money. Think about those next time you do business for them. If they cannot perform an empty gesture of putting a banner on their site at risk of losing some business - what makes you think they won't sell you out at first opportunity.

Companies that give impression of being willing to lose users (they won't) through such actions gain public favor and "points". Because everyone likes money, but being desperate for it raises trustworthiness questions. Hence people trust Google and distrust MS. When Google went out of China, MS said they're perfectly happy there. That's PR. It also shows who isn't either a lobbyst or lobbyst's bitch.

No, not being able to affect the passing of the bill in anyway makes it easy for me to ignore it... or would have if a bunch of websites hadn't decided to inconvinence the rest of the world over it...

Yes it may sadly mean it doesn't work, though that doesn't mean people shouldn't still try to oppose it. I don't see any reason to think that the organisations taking part (especially Wikipedia, where the decision was made by ordinary users of the site) are being two faced here.