Facebook, Google, PayPal, Amazon and others may shut down to protest SOPA
I hope this happens, not just because the passage of SOPA would be unimaginably destructive to society on so many levels, but also because this would be interesting as hell. Like a temporary digital apocalypse…
Despite a number of warnings from social network and web hosting companies about its potential for governmental abuse, some say that H.R. 3261, commonly known as the Stop Online Piracy Act, has a good shot at passage.
Should this happen, members of the online trade association netCoalition have had “serious discussions about” shutting down part (or all) of free society’s most popular websites and social networks, according to netCoalition head Markham Erickson.
To get a feel for how big this could be, members of netCoalition include search sites such as Google, AOL and Yahoo!, social network powerhouses Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Foursquare, online shopping stalwarts PayPal, Amazon and eBay, and Firefox founder Mozilla. Web founders of netCoalition include founders or CEOs of Netscape, Flickr and The Huffington Post.
Did that last paragraph get your attention?
If SOPA passes, netCoalition members are hoping a “nuclear option” of going dark with their sites will force a deluge of user emails, phone calls, and perhaps even angry mobs to the halls of Congress. If Google and Wikipedia’s home pages provided a simple description of why they’ve shut down, along with the legal ramifications of SOPA, that’s a lot of eyeballs getting an eye-full fast.
Via Technorati
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