Blackout Day

Wikipedia is darkened; Google's logo is blanked out; Ars Technica and Techdirt are greyed. xkcd is blanked, too. Slashdot is not dark, but has taken up the cause with these entries and a poll.

<flame>The Register, naturally, treats the whole thing with sneering contempt, not able to understand why Silicon Valley's snotty Web teens won't grow up. I suspect The Register is a murdochist organ, since it did not report (let alone mock) a May 2009 Sunday Times editorial damning the Web as an evil California cult artifact.</flame>

As for the reason for the blackouts, let me list the effects of the bills that I have collectively called CLOACA, if either of them becomes law.

• The bills presume guilt by mere accusation, the very inverse of the the 5th, 6th, and 14th amendments to the Constitution. Proving innocence is expensive (and for small sites unaffordable) even if the accusation is false.
• The bills make start-ups too expensive to contemplate by entrepreneurs and venture capitalists due to costs of potential litigation. Jobs and services based on Web hosting and cloud computing move out of the U.S. to avoid litigation.
• The bills interfere with Internet security and DNSSEC, even if DNS-specific provisions are dropped.
• The bills require the building of a Great Firewall of America, crippling efforts by the U.S. Government to promote free speech worldwide, and vindicating our enemies without their having to act.
• The main supporter of the bills, the entertainment industry, are a small part of the U.S. economy. The bills will not improve their bottom lines, no matter how much money they spend on Congress. Nor is the entertainment industry capable of making up for the losses in jobs and in innovation once the bills, if they should become law, are fully enforced.

In a world in which politicians regulate the Internet based on the influence of big money, Wikipedia — and sites like it — cannot survive.

Given the technological cluelessness of the average Congressman or civil servant, I really should write letters to my representative and my two senators, explaining the reasons above and asking them to NOT support the bills.