Is a day of silence, lock down, black out and strike the right reaction to #STOPSOPA? - personal comment
Tomorrow (Wednesday 18th Jan 2012) Wikipedia will black out, friends will not Tweet and I am sure other activities will occur to protest for Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in the US.
This post is not about why I support but more of a reflection about action. I have never been able to strike or stop work as I have been self employed or in growth companies for just about my entire working career. But I now have the choice to make my view known. Many of us watched in awe as several counties used the Internet to bring about regime change and have enjoyed free services in exchange for our data and advertising.
It feels good that we can now raise a peaceful protest and have a voice, but how did we get to this point? I am left wondering how it is that the US even got as far as they did with the proposals and who’s voice is the true voice Government listens to until we protest. Why is it that we protest late and not early?
Within the EU we are facing the same issue with policy and proposals being introduced from Viviane Reading that appear to be backed by those who have an old model to protect and want the state (law) to do something that the senior execs failed to do.
Issues that we should be engaged in include: Tracking, Nymwars, security, location, GPS, privacy, DoNot Track, Government Data, storage and protection of data, citizenship, rights and access to name a few. If only there was enough time….
Therefore, I can see someone coming up with a new CAPTCHA style idea, See this TED talk, where at the joining stage of a service ( or usage) we get to voice a vote about something – massive scale online collaboration to bring about change rather than a day of protest a continual stream of consciousness from the voter?