The idea that only a few people have heard of SOPA is ridiculous.
Most people who browse a lot of these sites are already internet savvy enough to know what SOPA is.
It has been discussed on virtually every popular internet community. It has been beaten to death on virtually every game, media, pop portal on the web.


Most of the websites that ARE shutting down have been vehemently against SOPA for a while now. Regular users to those websites would have known by now. People who use wikipedia, even if totally ignorant about everything else on the internet, would have seen the reminder on every page prior to today.

A lot of companies are also doing this out of populism, and the hopes of getting a pat on the back from the crowd.

Awareness often code word for "I am lazy to do anything about it, but by letting someone else know I've done my part".

That's a somewhat distorted way of putting it. The largest ever surplus of electricity in history was around 6% in the first quarter of 2011, just before Fukushima.
Instead of producing nuclear energy on-shore, we now buy it from France and Czech Republic. There has been a controversy about serious security concerns in the latter, though funnily it's the former who seem to have one incident after the other. Or maybe you only don't hear about the ones in the Czech Republic... who knows. Electricity rates have (after adjusting for inflation) steadily been increasing during the last decade, around 30% since the year 2000. If there was truly a continuous, vast surplus, one would expect rates to go down, not up. Though, admittedly, tax (which makes up 45% of the end price nowadays, as opposed to 30% a decade ago) may play into this, I've not done a breakdown to the cent for that.

The nuclear angle was election point gathering.

Again, it's the opposite. It certainly was not election point gathering. After nonchalantly extending the operation time of some power plants which frankly should have been shut down decades ago only weeks before, the government has considerably damaged whatever credibility it may have had with this U-turn. If you ever needed a proof for governments being corrupt and totally clueless (a dangerous combination), there you go.

Also, by sheer coincidence, coal powerplants will be built to replace nuclear power. The only "green" there[/quote]Don't get me started on the common sense of "green". Oh, too late, there it comes... Nobody doubts that nuclear waste isn't the best possible thing, and putting the crap into an old salt mine admittedly is not the best thing either, but unless someone has a better solution, it's as good as it gets for now. Electricity is something that is needed, it's as simple as that.
Plus, not few "ultra greens" that I know around here live by "fuck you nuclear (... and electricity comes out of that plug in the wall)". They all have their cell phones and iPods and consoles, and leave the light on when they go out. But what's really dangerous about nuclear energy is the mentals who sabotage the transports. As if it was not dangerous enough already, we definitely need some idiots to bend rails and put burning beams into the way.

I'm not even going to start on solar energy in a country that hardly has any sun, wind power miles and miles out in the ocean, or on biofuel (the totally surprising new ozone hole is certainly not related to widespread rapeseed planting, it must be the cold winter or Jupiter being in line with Mars).

But regarless... my point is, they have proven what radical change you can achieve given a lucky occasion, if you are well organized and get a critical mass together. And that critical mass is the whole thing. If it isn't politically scary, you can do what you want. Nobody cares.

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.

Let's pick Wikipedia, which is used by millions 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...[/quote]This is explaned by Wikimedia - basically there were technical issues with guaranteeing a perfect 100% blackout at such short notice. So yes, you were probably one of the people who didn't see a block. But nonetheless, the block was there for many people - I saw it myself.

And you still heard about it, so it achieved its effect in raising awareness.

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.[/quote]Yes, but would you be more likely to write to a politician about a law?

With any block, there's a trade off between raising awareness, and just annoying people and losing visitors to your side. Yes, I believe as you do that a mere banner header is too little; but a block for weeks on end is too far at the other extreme. A one day block gets the message out to millions, without causing additional annoyance.

On the other hand, if Wikipedia shows a small header on top of the page, who cares?[/quote]As I say, this wasn't the case for most users, it's just that the block wasn't 100% perfect.

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.[/quote]I'm confused - of course the point is for people to come back tomorrow, that's the point. The point is to raise awareness, not to annoy people to leave your site altogether!

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.[/quote]And how could we even start to get 100,000 people protesting? Maybe by spreading awareness on the law to millions of people? Maybe we could do that with a blackout on one of the most visited pages on the Internet.

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.[/quote]Exactly, which is why they didn't do it. You're blaming them for not doing something that wouldn't be sensible?

[quote name='Hodgman' timestamp='1326930160' post='4904129']
http://www.google.co...date=ytd&sort=0

Based on the search locations on the bottom half of this it does somewhat prove my point too; if you were trying to have an impact on the US side you'd hope to see a large proportion of US based searches.

Instead a few other countries are trying to understand wtf is going on and that appears to be about it... granted it is one data point but it's certainly not showing a drive for people to find out what sopa is or all about...
[/quote]Okay, look at http://www.google.com/trends/?q=sopa&ctab=0&geo=us&date=ytd&sort=0 - shows same upspike.

[quote name='phantom' timestamp='1326933174' post='4904142']
[quote name='Hodgman' timestamp='1326930160' post='4904129']
http://www.google.co...date=ytd&sort=0

Based on the search locations on the bottom half of this it does somewhat prove my point too; if you were trying to have an impact on the US side you'd hope to see a large proportion of US based searches.

Instead a few other countries are trying to understand wtf is going on and that appears to be about it... granted it is one data point but it's certainly not showing a drive for people to find out what sopa is or all about...
[/quote]Okay, look at http://www.google.co...date=ytd&sort=0 - shows same upspike.
[/quote]
Was anybody else surprised how many people look for soup in spanish?

The idea that only a few people have heard of SOPA is ridiculous.
Most people who browse a lot of these sites are already internet savvy enough to know what SOPA is.
It has been discussed on virtually every popular internet community. It has been beaten to death on virtually every game, media, pop portal on the web.

I agree it's an open question as to how many people already know about SOPA, and how many new people would hear as a result of a blackout.

But I think you're vastly overstating how many people take part in these Internet community discussions. Plenty of ordinary people use Wikipedia, but don't hang out on Internet forums. There are also people who may not use Wikipedia every day, but will now hear about coverage of the blackout, and opposition to SOPA, in the news.

Also there's a question of how much - I had only vaguely heard of SOPA (despite being on popular Internet communities), and it's only since the blackout that I took time to read more about it. People often don't have time to take notice of every little thing they hear about - but they do take notice if they see lots of people talking about it (as in, the coverage generated by the Wikipedia blackout, not a few people like us talking about it). Banner ads are easy for people to not pay attention to these days, but a full page blackout that you can't click through is harder to notice. Indeed, a banner was considered as one of the options, but most people supported a full blackout.

People who use wikipedia, even if totally ignorant about everything else on the internet, would have seen the reminder on every page prior to today.[/quote]So they don't need to have a blackout, because there was a reminder that there'll be a blackout?

A lot of companies are also doing this out of populism, and the hopes of getting a pat on the back from the crowd.

Awareness often code word for "I am lazy to do anything about it, but by letting someone else know I've done my part".[/quote]Who cares what people's motives are - raising awareness is an important part of politics. And I suspect the ordinary people (not companies) who decided on the Wikipedia blackout are genuinely against SOPA, and not after a non-existent pat on the back.

Obviously companies have other motives - but I could just as well claim that those companies supporting SOPA are just after a pat on the back from people.

But I think you're vastly overstating how many people take part in these Internet community discussions. Plenty of ordinary people use Wikipedia, but don't hang out on Internet forums. There are also people who may not use Wikipedia every day, but will now hear about coverage of the blackout, and opposition to SOPA, in the news.

Reddit has ~28 million unique visitors. Wikipedia has 400 million uniques. Everyone who visited wikipedia saw the block, while only a fraction of reddit users pays attention to SOPA or even sees it, let alone pays attention to it without full site block.

These numbers alone do not say much, since active reddit posters are more likely to be engaged and take action. For comparison, link above shows that only 200,000 of those 400 million made >5 edits to wikipedia. Reddit ratio between visitors and posters is in the same order. If 1% of visitors post, that's quite a lot.

Same applies to outside world. Of all those that saw the block, only a small fraction will take notice and of those, an equally small fraction will take action. It becomes a numbers game, one simply needs to reach largest possible number of people.

[quote name='mdwh' timestamp='1326985456' post='4904283']But I think you're vastly overstating how many people take part in these Internet community discussions. Plenty of ordinary people use Wikipedia, but don't hang out on Internet forums. There are also people who may not use Wikipedia every day, but will now hear about coverage of the blackout, and opposition to SOPA, in the news.

Reddit has ~28 million unique visitors. Wikipedia has 400 million uniques. Everyone who visited wikipedia saw the block, while only a fraction of reddit users pays attention to SOPA or even sees it, let alone pays attention to it without full site block.
[/quote]
That explains why there were no tweets or facebook statuses wondering why wikipedia was down even with links to explanations of why wikipedia was down on every page of wikipedia through the entirety of the blackout; clearly they all saw the block advertising the blackout leading up to the blackout.

These numbers alone do not say much, since active reddit posters are more likely to be engaged and take action. For comparison, link above shows that only 200,000 of those 400 million made >5 edits to wikipedia. Reddit ratio between visitors and posters is in the same order. If 1% of visitors post, that's quite a lot.[/quote]
Just because you don't edit wikipedia doesn't mean you aren't an active user. I've made one edit to a wikipedia page that was taken out shortly after, but I've used thousands of wikipedia pages. How many writers do you know have written dictionaries/grammer books? Do you think they wouldn't be engaged in the english language because they don't write dictionaries or grammar books?

Just because you don't edit wikipedia doesn't mean you aren't an active user. I've made one edit to a wikipedia page that was taken out shortly after, but I've used thousands of wikipedia pages.

Engagement is one of most important topics these days. Getting people to act is incredibly hard if you don't have a monopoly over a desirable resource. Since most don't, they solve it by reducing friction aka absolute minimal amount of effort needed to participate.

Facebook went a step forward here through their involuntary sharing.

That explains why there were no tweets or facebook statuses wondering why wikipedia was down even with links to explanations of why wikipedia was down on every page of wikipedia through the entirety of the blackout; clearly they all saw the block advertising the blackout leading up to the blackout.[/quote]

There were 2.4 million tweets. Compared to wiki numbers (400M / 30 days = 13M/day) the reaction is fairly notable (thought not directly correlated to wikipedia itself).

Compare this to some other numbers.

If they didn't reach you, it just goes to show how fickle such communication is. Maybe your interest groups don't overlap with those that talked about it.

Now imagine just how hard it becomes to reach someone who isn't active online or their online interaction is limited to Facebook or perhaps Youtube. According to Google, as well as some others, teenagers these days don't tend to start online either on Facebook or Google or anywhere else. They go to Youtube and use that as search engine. Hence the rise in video tutorials or video-based content, even for topics where it's ill suited. Copyright awareness was also studied in case of YT, showing that most users are well-meaning, but completely misunderstand what IP is and how it works.

That explains why there were no tweets or facebook statuses wondering why wikipedia was down even with links to explanations of why wikipedia was down on every page of wikipedia through the entirety of the blackout; clearly they all saw the block advertising the blackout leading up to the blackout.

My facebook feed was covered with people either a) wondering why sites were "blacked out," b) asking what SOPA is and why people are so against it, or c) linking to petition sights encouraging others to write to and call their senators. That's not to mention the stuff on Google+ I saw, nor does it account for the real life conversations I had with several people (in person and on the phone).

We must be using different facebooks.