Source: TechlandGraeme McMillan
Can you imagine a world without Google or Facebook? If plans to protest the potential passing of the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA)
come to fruition, you won’t need to; those sites, along with many other
well-known online destinations, will go temporarily offline as a taste
of what we could expect from a post-SOPA Internet.
Companies including Google, Facebook, Twitter, PayPal, Yahoo! and
Wikipedia are said to be discussing a coordinated blackout of services
to demonstrate the potential effect SOPA would have on the Internet,
something already being called a “nuclear option” of protesting. The
rumors surrounding the potential blackout were only strengthened by
Markham Erickson, executive director of trade association NetCoalition,
who told FoxNews that “a number of companies have had discussions about [blacking out services]” last week.
According to Erickson, the companies are well aware of how serious an act such a blackout would be:
This type of thing doesn’t happen because companies typically don’t want to put their users in that position. The difference is that these bills so fundamentally change the way the Internet works. People need to understand the effect this special-interest legislation will have on those who use the Internet.
The idea of an Internet blackout should seem familiar to anyone who’s
been paying attention to the debate so far. In addition to a blackout
already carried out by Mozilla, hacking group Anonymous proposed the same thing
a couple of weeks ago, suggesting that sites replace their front pages
with a statement protesting SOPA. That suggestion itself came a week
after Jimmy Wales had asked Wikipedia users about the possibility of blacking out that site in protest of the bill.
As a way of drawing attention to the topic, it’s something that will
definitely work. Just Google alone going dark would cause havoc online,
but the idea of it happening at the same time as Facebook, Twitter et
al. follow suit seems almost unimaginable.
The question then becomes how to translate the inevitable confusion
and outrage from those who don’t know what SOPA is into activism. The
key, I assume, lies in the execution of the blackout: Will the sites
that voluntarily go down be entirely unavailable or will they follow the
Anonymous-proposed model of replacing the front page with a statement
explaining what is going on, why and how users can best become involved
in the discussion? If the sites do go entirely dark, is the
hope that the resulting outrage will be enough to fuel news stories
about the reason behind the decision? And that users will not transfer
their frustration to the sites themselves, as opposed to the bill
they’re protesting?
The fact that Facebook and Twitter are both said to be considering
taking part in the blackout is simultaneously heartening and worrying.
The former because, well, they’re standing up for what they collectively
believe in — and that’s a good thing. But the latter because the lack
of availability for social media on the proposed blackout day feels like
it’s giving up the best chance to harness the frustration and energy
people will feel about the temporary loss of the Internet as they know
it, and a great possibility to focus and direct that energy into
productive activism against SOPA. Then again, it may take losing
Facebook and Twitter to really drive home how dramatically SOPA could
affect the Internet.
All of this may come to nothing, of course. The companies may decide
not to black out their sites and find other ways to protest SOPA. That
could be for the best; collectively closing down the most trafficked
sites on the Internet to prove a point will certainly garner a lot of
attention, but the effects it’ll have beyond that (and the reactions
it’ll cause as a result) are difficult to predict and could easily end
up causing a backlash against the sites responsible at a time when they
least want it. But still … just try to imagine an Internet without
Google, Facebook or Yahoo. Even for a day. Almost makes you want it to
happen, just to make people realize how reliant we are on the Internet
as we know it now, doesn’t it?
MORE: Sorry, Folks: Game Publishers Didn’t ‘Drop’ SOPA Support
Graeme McMillan is a reporter at TIME. Find him on Twitter at @Graemem or on Facebook at Facebook/Graeme.McMillan. You can also continue the discussion on TIME’s Facebook page and on Twitter at @TIME.
