take on the blackout

January 18^th will go down as the day the internet was shut down.. or at least Wikipedia shut itself down to protest legislation to stop pirating of copywritten material.   Now obviously Wikipedia is immensely popular and blacking itself out will have a real affect as kid's might actually have to visit a library to finish their history reports.  Along with Wikipedia and CraigsList which are obviously very important in the cybersphere, Google put a big black box over their logo showing exactly how much they really believed in the cause and Mark Zuckerberg posted that "The Internet is the most powerful tool we have for creating a more open and connected world.  We can't let poorly thought out laws get in the way of the Internet's development. Facebook opposes SOPA and PIPA, and we will continue to oppose any laws that will hurt the Internet.  In other words this is really bad and we don't think they should do it but we won't actually take any action on Facebook.    Although it doesn't say much for standing up for what you believe in it does show that a Dobbs Ferry education made him smart enough to realize he shouldn't upset the apple-card so close to a possible record breaking IPO.

What we found interesting was that unlike Google and Facebook a number of other websites did follow suit and blacked out. The other websites includes something called Reddit which I have never heard of before and some blog named Boing Boing which I can only imagine is about babies.   So the question of course is…if a tree falls in the internet and nobody cares, does it make a sound?

The president of Reddit was all over CNN fawning anger against pirates..well against people who are against pirates.    If this isn't the greatest marketing scheme for Reddit because in every clip this dude makes sure to note that Reddit is some website where people go to vote for other websites and that they get millions of hits.   I swear that I've lived 36 years without ever having needed the services that Reddit offers which seem so insanely idiotic that can almost be misconstrued as clever.. 

The great irony of course is that nobody will remember Reddit tomorrow when they turn their lights back on.