8 ms·

Tumblr's anti-censorship message generated 87,834 phone calls to representatives

443 points by nextparadigms 15y ago

OoTheNigerian 15y ago
SOPA is a big deal and US will be worse off for it beacuse US based companies will be put at a disadvantage ab-inito. However, I think the people campaigning for opposition have failed to use 'normal' words to explain how it will affect the masses. For us here that have startups and are interested in these things, words like 'infringe copyright', 'safe-habour' etc make sense. All 90% of the masses need to know is this: If you paste that funny clip you saw on MTV on your Facebook, MTV can shut down Facebook or sue you. If you put that image you Googled on your blog, ALL your adsense money can be seized. If you Tweet it, you Twitter account can be closed. When 'the masses' hear this, it would make no sense cos it doesn't. We should "dumb down" the message to get it accross to the 'mainstream' populace I just wonder why the US legislature would want to deliberately cripple US's strength on the web.
- larrik 15y ago
  Or better yet: If you paste that funny clip you saw on MTV on your Facebook, MTV can press criminal charges and send you to jail.
  - Lukeas14 15y ago
    Only if you can clearly point out the section of the bill that would allow this to happen. Otherwise, FUD claims will kill all credibility and we'll have a Sarah Palin "Death Panels" situation.
    - lancewiggs 15y ago
      Except, sadly, those death panels comments actually resonated with some folks. There is a place for serious statements, but also a place, again sadly, for soaring rhetoric.
- lachyg 15y ago
  What happens if there servers and legal entity is in another country?
  - matwood 15y ago
    Who cares is the OPs point. The general populace doesn't think or care where a server is located. The message needs to be framed in a way that mainstream people understand.
    - lachyg 15y ago
      I understand that, I'm just curious from a personal point of view.
  - wanorris 15y ago
    If a site uses a US based hosting company, domain name (e.g. .com), or payment processor, those services may still be cut off, even if the servers are out of the country. I doubt they would have any legal basis for extraditing a non-US-citizen for a SOPA violation, but there have been attempts to pursue charges against foreign citizens for notable DMCA violations if they enter the US, so that could continue to be the case with SOPA. If a US citizen uses a foreign server, I doubt that would shield them from legal action.
    - chimeracoder 15y ago
      I never understood why the US gets to own the .com TLD.
      - jonknee 15y ago
        Because the US created it, along with the internet. Luckily it's no longer maintained by the Department of Defense. http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc920 http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc920
        calloc 15y ago
- Dn_Ab 15y ago
  This is not just a risk to the U.S. Europe, Australia and especially the U.K. look to the U.S. for precedent. If this passes it is likely that they would use it as a basis to extend this nonsense to their respective jurisdictions while justifying it as necessary for protective or economic reasons. Then these countries will have less of a leg to stand on when criticizing less open countries; who will be able to say: actually you are no different to us, the only difference is that we are more honest about the fact that we prioritize other things above freedom and cultural advancement.
  - dclaysmith 15y ago
    Looks like the EU has already come out against SOPA. https://torrentfreak.com/eu-adopts-resolution-against-us-domains-seziures-111117/ https://torrentfreak.com/eu-adopts-resolution-against-us-dom...
    - Dn_Ab 15y ago
      Ah thanks. That is something positive at least.
    - dhimes 15y ago
      cnn and msnbc don't appear to be following the story at all.
      - waqf 15y ago
        No surprises there since CNN is a content provider and MS is also believed to be pro-SOPA: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3249396 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3249396
        dhimes 15y ago
        Following up, I asked my wife last night and she had heard nothing about it.
- UrLicht 15y ago
  "I just wonder why the US legislature would want to deliberately cripple US's strength on the web." I dunno, my guess is there must be a lot of money involved.
- wmf 15y ago
  If you paste that funny clip you saw on MTV on your Facebook, MTV can shut down Facebook or sue you. Video is an interesting case since much of it is explicitly embeddable; you can't encourage embedding and then call it copyright infringement.
  - SoftwareMaven 15y ago
    YouTube provides the embedding; WB et al the content. It's easy to get into that situation.
  - aaam 15y ago
    The problem is that while one part of the corporation can encourage you to share that video, this does not prevent any another part of the same corporation to claim that this act is "infringement? All they need to do is can claim "infringement" without having to prove anything, without any obligation of fairness, correctness, and no penalty when wrong. After that your website is taken offline, your income is frozen, your income disappears and only then you may sue to get it all back, without any possibility of being compensated for your time and expenses. The problem is that there is no neutral, objective oversight before damage is done and no compensation of damages caused by wrongful enforcement, which leaves us without protection against overzealous, perhaps even full automated, enforcement.
CWIZO 15y ago
Can somebody explain what exactly did they do? Who made those calls?
- antr 15y ago
  confusing post
  - lobo_tuerto 15y ago
    No it's not. You can read the last paragraph to know _who_ made the calls: "We also want to express our tremendous gratitude to our friends at Mobile Commons who, on 30 minutes notice, hooked us up with their amazing platform (and provided their expertise) to automatically connect callers with their Representatives."
    - antr 15y ago
      Adrian I'm sorry you down voted my comment. I am not confused with the "who" but how the post is written and expressed. It starts saying "we generated", "we've been heard", later it quotes Representative D. Issa who they've "heard" where/how? Did she also call via Mobile Commons? It finally finishes the post saying "connect callers with their Representatives." So no longer mentioning the "we". This post is tough to understand, i.e. a confusing post. Just trying to express my feeling, I'm glad you understood it, but you don't need to be patronising
      - starwed 15y ago
        Do you have some secret ability to know who clicked the downvote button that the rest of us lack?
        drivingmenuts 15y ago
        There is a downvote button? Seriously, I've never seen the downvote button on this site.
maeon3 15y ago
The big companies would censor the data stream between my motor cortex and muscles if they could. But that is ridiculous, so they will settle for censoring the streams between all computers. Remember, in 50 years we will all have onboard computers integrated with our thoughts. we must program freedom right into the fabric of the net. As free as the signals between my liver and brain.
jcc80 15y ago
While it's clear SOPA isn't going anywhere, my concern is that the "next" SOPA won't be so extreme and hence, the outrage will be muted. All they need is a foothold to build off of. Luckily they were dumb this time and tried to go big.
- shawnc 15y ago
  What you said here, this is exactly what I thought. I've watched how gas prices rise. They go REALLY high, everyone has an outrage, they lower it and we all calm down. Then they rise slowly, and they get to that same price everyone was outraged about but now it's happened slowly, like the boiling frog. Plus, we outraged once, now we're just tired. It's going to happen the same way with this.
  - jcc80 15y ago
    Yes, the fatigue of everyday people (including my own) to these types of things is disappointing. Who can keep up with all the funny cat videos out there though...
- nextparadigms 15y ago
  But now a lot of people are aware of what they are trying to do with bills like this one, so there might be a lot of people speaking out against the next one, too. I once read a comment regarding the content industry's push for more draconian laws regarding piracy, and that guy said, they will keep doing this until the camel's back breaks, and then all their chances to pull this off will be completely eliminated, and they might even be worse off in the end (banning of online copyright, etc).
  - waqf 15y ago
    I would like to believe you are right, but I think Big Content has time for a few more tries before everyone of legislating age understands the situation.
- jtchang 15y ago
  What we really need to be campaigning for is a measure to "protect" us from SOPA.
trustfundbaby 15y ago
I use tumblr and while I understand and empathize with what they are trying to do, I found their approach to be a little heavy handed. All the content on your dashboard was blacked out, and for the entire day, when you went to edit your content you got directed to the "call your congressman" page. I found it very very off putting ... just my 2c.
- wanorris 15y ago
  Given the way people use Tumblr, SOPA could force them to shut down the entire site, or change it so drastically that it's no longer recognizable. A threat of that nature makes it worth stepping on a few toes.
- cwilson 15y ago
  That was exactly the point they were trying to make.
SagelyGuru 15y ago
Does this SOPA law include shutting down .org .com .net etc domains worldwide, based on accusations of breaking the US software patents? I understand it is intended to achieve the worldwide shutdowns for copyright issues, using the fact that these domains are administered by US companies.
Aaronontheweb 15y ago
I used this service to speak to my Congresswoman for the first time in my life. Kudos to the Tumblr team for enabling a lot of generally-not-political people like me who to make our voices heard when needed.
- benstein 15y ago
  This comment made me very, very happy. Hopefully you and many other first time callers will continue to make your voices heard in the political process. Despite what the cynics may say, calling your legislators really does make a difference. Benjamin Stein Co-founder & CTO, Mobile Commons
  - Aaronontheweb 15y ago
    I could actually hear the "oh shit" realization in the aide's voice when I spoke to him. I explained how the bill worked and how it could impact him and some of the services he uses every day. That made my day.
    - chimeracoder 15y ago
      Had he seriously not heard of it before?
    - izaidi 15y ago
      I just want to make sure I understand: you called the Congresswoman's office, the aide answered, you explained the situation to him, he realized it was important, and he agreed to let you talk to his boss?
      - Aaronontheweb 15y ago
        No, didn't get to talk to his boss :(
rorrr 15y ago
Imagine if Google did it.
rexreed 15y ago
On a side note, the graphs / charts on this page are really quite visually appealing. Does anyone know if these were automatically generated charts, and if so what tool is used? If not, probably just some data extraction and photoshop, but still, nice looking data.
- iamdave 15y ago
  They say they connected with Mobile Commons to build the app, so my immediate guess was Mobile Commons provided them with the API and statistics, and tumblr just designed around those stats for the visual styling.
stfu 15y ago
It is great to see that tumblr is actually doing something! Putting up some ad in the NYT/WSJ is not enough. Google could have done something similar, e.g. blacking out every first search result or something like that. In this ongoing attack on freedom and the internet in its current form it is time to flex some muscles.
datums 15y ago
I contacted her via the EFF site Reply from Senator Gillibrand Thank you for writing to me regarding S. 968, the PROTECT IP Act of 2011. I understand your concerns. I am a cosponsor of this legislation because I believe that we must protect American intellectual property against foreign websites that infringe upon our rights. By empowering the Attorney General of the United States to go after foreign infringing websites, this legislation becomes a necessary tool to ensure that U.S. companies remain competitive in the world marketplace. I recognize that there are technical concerns with the enforcement of this bill that need to be addressed. I am committed to working with my colleagues in the United States Senate to ensure that this legislation protects the Constitutional rights of Americans and does not stifle lawful free speech or innovation on the internet. Thank you again for writing to express your concerns, and I hope that you keep in touch with my office regarding future legislation. For more information on this and other important issues, please visit my website at http://gillibrand.senate.gov http://gillibrand.senate.gov and sign up for my e-newsletter.
- ricardobeat 15y ago
  What about us foreigners?? :)
ricardobeat 15y ago
I'm a bit scared by this. Imagine if a company like Google did the same (they already have Google Voice), but supporting the bill? As it's always been, media companies have a lot of power in their hands - maybe even more so on the internet.

443 points by nextparadigms 15y ago

SOPA is a big deal and US will be worse off for it beacuse US based companies will be put at a disadvantage ab-inito. However, I think the people campaigning for opposition have failed to use 'normal' words to explain how it will affect the masses. For us here that have startups and are interested in these things, words like 'infringe copyright', 'safe-habour' etc make sense. All 90% of the masses need to know is this: If you paste that funny clip you saw on MTV on your Facebook, MTV can shut down Facebook or sue you. If you put that image you Googled on your blog, ALL your adsense money can be seized. If you Tweet it, you Twitter account can be closed. When 'the masses' hear this, it would make no sense cos it doesn't. We should "dumb down" the message to get it accross to the 'mainstream' populace I just wonder why the US legislature would want to deliberately cripple US's strength on the web.

larrik 15y ago
Or better yet: If you paste that funny clip you saw on MTV on your Facebook, MTV can press criminal charges and send you to jail.
- Lukeas14 15y ago
  Only if you can clearly point out the section of the bill that would allow this to happen. Otherwise, FUD claims will kill all credibility and we'll have a Sarah Palin "Death Panels" situation.
  - lancewiggs 15y ago
    Except, sadly, those death panels comments actually resonated with some folks. There is a place for serious statements, but also a place, again sadly, for soaring rhetoric.
lachyg 15y ago
What happens if there servers and legal entity is in another country?
- matwood 15y ago
  Who cares is the OPs point. The general populace doesn't think or care where a server is located. The message needs to be framed in a way that mainstream people understand.
  - lachyg 15y ago
    I understand that, I'm just curious from a personal point of view.
- wanorris 15y ago
  If a site uses a US based hosting company, domain name (e.g. .com), or payment processor, those services may still be cut off, even if the servers are out of the country. I doubt they would have any legal basis for extraditing a non-US-citizen for a SOPA violation, but there have been attempts to pursue charges against foreign citizens for notable DMCA violations if they enter the US, so that could continue to be the case with SOPA. If a US citizen uses a foreign server, I doubt that would shield them from legal action.
  - chimeracoder 15y ago
    I never understood why the US gets to own the .com TLD.
    - jonknee 15y ago
      Because the US created it, along with the internet. Luckily it's no longer maintained by the Department of Defense. http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc920 http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc920
      - calloc 15y ago
Dn_Ab 15y ago
This is not just a risk to the U.S. Europe, Australia and especially the U.K. look to the U.S. for precedent. If this passes it is likely that they would use it as a basis to extend this nonsense to their respective jurisdictions while justifying it as necessary for protective or economic reasons. Then these countries will have less of a leg to stand on when criticizing less open countries; who will be able to say: actually you are no different to us, the only difference is that we are more honest about the fact that we prioritize other things above freedom and cultural advancement.
- dclaysmith 15y ago
  Looks like the EU has already come out against SOPA. https://torrentfreak.com/eu-adopts-resolution-against-us-domains-seziures-111117/ https://torrentfreak.com/eu-adopts-resolution-against-us-dom...
  - Dn_Ab 15y ago
    Ah thanks. That is something positive at least.
  - dhimes 15y ago
    cnn and msnbc don't appear to be following the story at all.
    - waqf 15y ago
      No surprises there since CNN is a content provider and MS is also believed to be pro-SOPA: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3249396 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3249396
      - dhimes 15y ago
        Following up, I asked my wife last night and she had heard nothing about it.
UrLicht 15y ago
"I just wonder why the US legislature would want to deliberately cripple US's strength on the web." I dunno, my guess is there must be a lot of money involved.
wmf 15y ago
If you paste that funny clip you saw on MTV on your Facebook, MTV can shut down Facebook or sue you. Video is an interesting case since much of it is explicitly embeddable; you can't encourage embedding and then call it copyright infringement.
- SoftwareMaven 15y ago
  YouTube provides the embedding; WB et al the content. It's easy to get into that situation.
- aaam 15y ago
  The problem is that while one part of the corporation can encourage you to share that video, this does not prevent any another part of the same corporation to claim that this act is "infringement? All they need to do is can claim "infringement" without having to prove anything, without any obligation of fairness, correctness, and no penalty when wrong. After that your website is taken offline, your income is frozen, your income disappears and only then you may sue to get it all back, without any possibility of being compensated for your time and expenses. The problem is that there is no neutral, objective oversight before damage is done and no compensation of damages caused by wrongful enforcement, which leaves us without protection against overzealous, perhaps even full automated, enforcement.

CWIZO 15y ago

Can somebody explain what exactly did they do? Who made those calls?

antr 15y ago
confusing post
- lobo_tuerto 15y ago
  No it's not. You can read the last paragraph to know _who_ made the calls: "We also want to express our tremendous gratitude to our friends at Mobile Commons who, on 30 minutes notice, hooked us up with their amazing platform (and provided their expertise) to automatically connect callers with their Representatives."
  - antr 15y ago
    Adrian I'm sorry you down voted my comment. I am not confused with the "who" but how the post is written and expressed. It starts saying "we generated", "we've been heard", later it quotes Representative D. Issa who they've "heard" where/how? Did she also call via Mobile Commons? It finally finishes the post saying "connect callers with their Representatives." So no longer mentioning the "we". This post is tough to understand, i.e. a confusing post. Just trying to express my feeling, I'm glad you understood it, but you don't need to be patronising
    - starwed 15y ago
      Do you have some secret ability to know who clicked the downvote button that the rest of us lack?
      - drivingmenuts 15y ago
        There is a downvote button? Seriously, I've never seen the downvote button on this site.

maeon3 15y ago

The big companies would censor the data stream between my motor cortex and muscles if they could. But that is ridiculous, so they will settle for censoring the streams between all computers. Remember, in 50 years we will all have onboard computers integrated with our thoughts. we must program freedom right into the fabric of the net. As free as the signals between my liver and brain.

jcc80 15y ago

While it's clear SOPA isn't going anywhere, my concern is that the "next" SOPA won't be so extreme and hence, the outrage will be muted. All they need is a foothold to build off of. Luckily they were dumb this time and tried to go big.

shawnc 15y ago
What you said here, this is exactly what I thought. I've watched how gas prices rise. They go REALLY high, everyone has an outrage, they lower it and we all calm down. Then they rise slowly, and they get to that same price everyone was outraged about but now it's happened slowly, like the boiling frog. Plus, we outraged once, now we're just tired. It's going to happen the same way with this.
- jcc80 15y ago
  Yes, the fatigue of everyday people (including my own) to these types of things is disappointing. Who can keep up with all the funny cat videos out there though...
nextparadigms 15y ago
But now a lot of people are aware of what they are trying to do with bills like this one, so there might be a lot of people speaking out against the next one, too. I once read a comment regarding the content industry's push for more draconian laws regarding piracy, and that guy said, they will keep doing this until the camel's back breaks, and then all their chances to pull this off will be completely eliminated, and they might even be worse off in the end (banning of online copyright, etc).
- waqf 15y ago
  I would like to believe you are right, but I think Big Content has time for a few more tries before everyone of legislating age understands the situation.
jtchang 15y ago
What we really need to be campaigning for is a measure to "protect" us from SOPA.

trustfundbaby 15y ago

I use tumblr and while I understand and empathize with what they are trying to do, I found their approach to be a little heavy handed. All the content on your dashboard was blacked out, and for the entire day, when you went to edit your content you got directed to the "call your congressman" page. I found it very very off putting ... just my 2c.

wanorris 15y ago
Given the way people use Tumblr, SOPA could force them to shut down the entire site, or change it so drastically that it's no longer recognizable. A threat of that nature makes it worth stepping on a few toes.
cwilson 15y ago
That was exactly the point they were trying to make.

SagelyGuru 15y ago

Does this SOPA law include shutting down .org .com .net etc domains worldwide, based on accusations of breaking the US software patents? I understand it is intended to achieve the worldwide shutdowns for copyright issues, using the fact that these domains are administered by US companies.

Aaronontheweb 15y ago

I used this service to speak to my Congresswoman for the first time in my life. Kudos to the Tumblr team for enabling a lot of generally-not-political people like me who to make our voices heard when needed.

benstein 15y ago
This comment made me very, very happy. Hopefully you and many other first time callers will continue to make your voices heard in the political process. Despite what the cynics may say, calling your legislators really does make a difference. Benjamin Stein Co-founder & CTO, Mobile Commons
- Aaronontheweb 15y ago
  I could actually hear the "oh shit" realization in the aide's voice when I spoke to him. I explained how the bill worked and how it could impact him and some of the services he uses every day. That made my day.
  - chimeracoder 15y ago
    Had he seriously not heard of it before?
  - izaidi 15y ago
    I just want to make sure I understand: you called the Congresswoman's office, the aide answered, you explained the situation to him, he realized it was important, and he agreed to let you talk to his boss?
    - Aaronontheweb 15y ago
      No, didn't get to talk to his boss :(

rorrr 15y ago

Imagine if Google did it.

rexreed 15y ago

On a side note, the graphs / charts on this page are really quite visually appealing. Does anyone know if these were automatically generated charts, and if so what tool is used? If not, probably just some data extraction and photoshop, but still, nice looking data.

iamdave 15y ago
They say they connected with Mobile Commons to build the app, so my immediate guess was Mobile Commons provided them with the API and statistics, and tumblr just designed around those stats for the visual styling.

stfu 15y ago

It is great to see that tumblr is actually doing something! Putting up some ad in the NYT/WSJ is not enough. Google could have done something similar, e.g. blacking out every first search result or something like that. In this ongoing attack on freedom and the internet in its current form it is time to flex some muscles.

datums 15y ago

I contacted her via the EFF site Reply from Senator Gillibrand Thank you for writing to me regarding S. 968, the PROTECT IP Act of 2011. I understand your concerns. I am a cosponsor of this legislation because I believe that we must protect American intellectual property against foreign websites that infringe upon our rights. By empowering the Attorney General of the United States to go after foreign infringing websites, this legislation becomes a necessary tool to ensure that U.S. companies remain competitive in the world marketplace. I recognize that there are technical concerns with the enforcement of this bill that need to be addressed. I am committed to working with my colleagues in the United States Senate to ensure that this legislation protects the Constitutional rights of Americans and does not stifle lawful free speech or innovation on the internet. Thank you again for writing to express your concerns, and I hope that you keep in touch with my office regarding future legislation. For more information on this and other important issues, please visit my website at http://gillibrand.senate.gov http://gillibrand.senate.gov and sign up for my e-newsletter.

ricardobeat 15y ago
What about us foreigners?? :)

ricardobeat 15y ago

I'm a bit scared by this. Imagine if a company like Google did the same (they already have Google Voice), but supporting the bill? As it's always been, media companies have a lot of power in their hands - maybe even more so on the internet.