Social sites such as Tumblr are going on the offensive in an effort to stop the potential adoption of the proposed Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in the US.
SOPA is a Hollywood-backed Bill, which is making its way through US Congress. While it has been punted as a well-intentioned copyright Bill that will help take down sites hosting pirated content, the concern is that sites such as Twitter, Facebook and Tumblr will be subject to its regulations.
US government and companies such as Warner Bros and Sony Music would essentially be allowed to censor sites that engage in, enable or facilitate copyright infringement.
On Wednesday, Tumblr, Firefox and Reddit “censored” their own Web sites with thick black lines, in an effort to protest the proposed law.
Tumblr censored all user-generated content seen by users as they first logged in. When users clicked on the blacked out content they were presented with a message:
“Congress is holding hearings today and will soon pass a Bill empowering corporations to censor the Internet unless you tell them no.”
Users were then given the option to leave their phone number in order to be put in touch with an elected representative. Those who supplied their numbers received a call from Tumblr with a pre-recorded message from CEO David Karp, in which he suggested key talking points before the user was then put on a call to their respective representatives.
Still in play
Today, Tumblr reports that it generated 87 834 phone calls to US representatives. “There's no doubt that we've been heard,” said the Tumblr blog.
“The well-intentioned, but immensely flawed 'Stop Online Piracy Act' is still in the House Judiciary Committee. The hearing was yesterday and now members will debate and bring amendments to the Bill.
“Nothing has been brought to a final vote. Everything is still very much in play.”
Tumblr representative Darrell Issa said: “I don't believe this Bill has any chance on the House floor. I think it's way too extreme; it infringes on too many areas that our leadership will know is simply too dangerous to do in its current form.”
Mozilla and Reddit censored the logos for the day, also with click-through instructions on how to contact representatives.
Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, Mozilla, Twitter, Yahoo, Zynga, eBay and AOL also all delivered a letter to the US Senate and House of Representatives, arguing that SOPA poses a risk to the future of their industry and US cyber security.
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