Web Giants Consider 'Nuclear Option' Blackout to Fight SOPA

It amazes me how many commenters here seem to be missing the point. The point is not to take these sites offline in a kind of "do what we want or you can't have our services" move, but to bring the issue to the attention of everyone who is unaware that this may affect them. These sites have the eyes of millions of americans who are completely unaware of the SOPA threat and turning the sites off for a day, or even showing a "stop censorship" notice will spread the awareness that previously was missing.

I dont like the term "nuclear option". The fact that there is no "mutually assured destruction" if they follow-up with this makes this so called "nuclear option" much less scary. Besides it is never been done before, so no one even knows what would be the result.<p>Saying "Please stand by for a demonstration of relevancy" and doing it would be way more effective<p>Speaking of "nuclear options", one of the reasons the bombs were dropped on japan in WW2 instead of just sending an "or else!" telegram was that threats would not have been taken seriously until the effect was confirmed - an there were even some doubts on whether it will work at all as designed. Unfortunately it did.

I understand the negative response to calling this a "Nuclear Option", but I don't understand everyone's negative reaction to the idea. How many 12 - 17 year old kids have any idea what SOPA is? If for the next two weeks all they saw was a "simulated SOPA" on facebook and google, how many do you think would complain to mom and dad? I'm sure plenty of kids of wealthy people have gotten things changed just in the name of shutting them up.<p>Why hasn't anyone suggested boycotting the media industries? Perhaps I missed it, but are we that materialistic to where no one even considered it? Stop going to theaters, buying from iTunes, cancel netflix. You vote with your dollars.

All these services have huge audiences. Audiences that money can't buy.<p>Every one of these services should have a splash page that every user sees at least once. It should explain in simple terms, what SOPA is, why it is on the verge of wrecking the US internet economy.<p>Time is running out. If these services don't act, they'll eventually be taken down by the political class who can't stand the fact that their power has diminished by the next wave of technology.<p>No one needs to black out anything, or "go nuclear". Just spread awareness. ASAP

I was disappointed when Time magazine named "the Protester" person of the year for 2011. A blackout of major web services would amount to little more than a stunt. Sure, the mainstream media will run the story for the first day...but for how long will these services remain willfully unavailable? Who will cave in first and go back online without resolution?<p>It seems to me that the popularity of activism and protesting do little to affect change, whereas more commonly yes than no they simply represent an inconvenience to everyone else who can't be bothered with another struggle/burden in their lives. There must be more mature and effective means of defeating SOPA than having a group of web services throwing a temper tantrum.

In 1996, many websites turned black to protest the community decency act. It was passed but invalidated by the supreme court. See <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_World_Wide_Web_protest" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_World_Wide_Web_protest</a>. Far fewer people were on the internet then, so today, something like that would have a far bigger impact.

I keep seeing talk about this, but it never seems to go beyond talk. It doesn't seem necessary to disable services entirely to get people's attention. Just adding a banner or link would have a <i>huge</i> impact. Consider the impact of adding a link to Google's front page or the Facebook top banner, or even a modified logo, with a link to a page which makes it easy to contact Congress (and which can handle the load).<p>Why does this require so much talk and so little action? Why do we keep seeing headlines of "consider", rather than the headlines we hope to see of the action taken and the resulting impact?

First, construct a phase 1-blackout. Where any users sees a large screen with info to contact their reps (and then allows them to proceed to the app).<p>The outcome of this less-abrasive approach may be enough - and if not, Plan B can then be implemented; a complete blackout.

Seems pretty reasonable to me. It's obviously bad business to get involved in politics, but for these companies it's either "Take ourselves offline for temporarily or face the chance of getting put out of business forever."

I'd like to see it if nothing else I think it would force those of us who have been to lazy to do something that day... as in "Well I was going to browse around for an hour before doing actual work but with all my sites down guess I'll do this SOPA letter to my representative thing that's been on my ToDo list"

We plan to have a splash page up Jan 23rd with info on Sopa and explaining why it's so vital people call their congressional rep.<p>Site5.com frontpage will be gone for a 24 hour period for it, Thanks, Ben

This is a rehash of old news, without actually providing anything new.

I would definately support a permanent blackout of Paypal. Please turn off and don't come back.

Does <a href="http://netcolation.com" rel="nofollow">http://netcolation.com</a> look fishy to anyone? It has no formal list of members, but instead claims to "represent" Google and others without elaborating as to what this means. It also looks like a part-time operation run by a pair of lawyers.<p>I am all for a coalition, but this looks odd at best and may easily backfire. If they <i>are</i> assigning themselves to be Google's representatives on the matter, then Google will have no choice but to distantiate from this entity, and this will inevitably be picked up by the media as "Google breaks away from anti-SOPA coalition."

That's the equivalent of USA blowing up an USA base with nuclear bombs to defend against the invaders. Please take it to them, blow up the invaders in their own bases.<p>Instead, promote Internet Freedom to replace and outlaw SOPA, DMCA, PROTECT-IP, COICA, CEST, OPENA, ACTA and more.<p>The pacifist nature of the SOPA movement sucks because it targets one bill, when there's a tsunami of anti-Internet bills.

When I read about this "Nuclear Option", I can't help but feel that it is nothing more than a PR ploy. How much money would be lost by companies like Amazon, Google, etc. by shutting their sites down for even a single day? Even more, this sort of stunt would be a Customer support nightmare for any of these companies. Though an interesting threat, it comes off as completely impractical from every angle.

FWIW, OpenDNS will not ever shut down our service and I doubt most of those other sites will either.<p>I keep seeing this "nuclear option" story and it's annoying. We will keep fighting against SOPA, but we won't shut down our service in protest, that would be far worse (and not effective).

They shouldn't do a blackout, they should "flag" links to/pages/accounts of politicians who hasn't pledged opposition to SOPA. If they are in favour of destroying the Internet, they shouldn't enjoy the privilege of having Google and Facebook assist their campaigns.

I really don't think this will work because the Government will see it for the empty threat that it truly is.<p>A Google or a Facebook prove they have the guts to throw their off-switch for anyone to take this seriously.

I, for one, would love to see a day (1) without Google. Almost like a moment of silence to realize how far the internet has come since '96. Would bing suddenly gain mass users? Would we rediscover dogpile?

They could also just block all SOPA voters from access to there services. Most of the pro-SOPA companies have knows IP-ranges.

Instead of a blackout, why not have a period of "IPV6" only?