Black March

[FenixR]

Kinda surprised this wasnt around here:

The Black March boycott is Anonymous' newest operation, under which participants will boycott media for the entire month of march in order to fight back against ACTA, SOPA and other threats to Internet freedom and privacy.

Lasting the entire month, the Black March boycott is a coordinated effort by various factions of the Internet that have aligned against the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, Stop Online Piracy Act, Protect IP Act, Protecting Children from Internet Pornographers Act and other such measures, and is being headed off by the Anonymous hacktivist collective.

Also known as Operation Black March and the Twitter hashtags #OpBlackMarch and #OpDontBuy, the boycott is the latest in a series of grassroots protests that have been arranged in order to allow people from across the world to come together and voice their opposition to ACTA and provisions within the treaty that threaten to limit Internet freedom, impose a new censorship regime, and quash online innovation.

Rest of the article here

Another article about it

So what are your opinions about this move? Do you think it will work? That it will really hurt the big shot companies? Are you participating in it?

[Mute]

I don't honestly see much of this. Frankly, my money's on that it will fall apart within the first week, or that it won't be widespread enough to even cause a blip on the political radar.

[Locked]

All this does is produce a lagging effect. Much like boycotting gas for a day, you'll just buy it again later and accomplish almost nothing. Add to the fact that most people don't even know about this and that this wasn't "wide spread" enough, this isn't really going to have much of an impact as it sounds.

[Flonne]

Much like boycotting gas for a day, you'll just buy it again later and accomplish almost nothing.

You need gas to function in society, you don't need the entertainment industry. Otherwise though, yeah, this won't cause anything to happen, more because most people haven't even heard of this.

[ShinkuDragon]

PCIPA, THAT'S the name i was trying to remember.

[Arrg]

All this does is produce a lagging effect. Much like boycotting gas for a day, you'll just buy it again later and accomplish almost nothing. Add to the fact that most people don't even know about this and that this wasn't "wide spread" enough, this isn't really going to have much of an impact as it sounds.

It was to impact their quarterly earnings numbers opposed to actually boycotting permanently.

[Words]

It's hard to tell. Online activism rarely has an effect in real world issues. I'd be surprised if anything actually happens.
To me, most of the times, it's just people copy+pasting a message without any thinking.

[JoeTang]

People will cave. They always cave.

[Worthyness]

But i need the internet to do homework :(

[Seanny]

I already don't bother looking at the news cause it's so useless most of the time.

I never had an interest in music.

I guess i just won't renew my GI subscription.

Books never taught me anything.

However, Tales of Graces comes out this month, no way I'm missing that.

Sorry, im just not strong enough.

[Icho]

I already don't bother looking at the news cause it's so useless most of the time.

I never had an interest in music.

I guess i just won't renew my GI subscription.

Books never taught me anything.

However, Tales of Graces comes out this month, no way I'm missing that.

Sorry, im just not strong enough.

OMG You pre-ordered it too !!! nerdgasm

Cant wait...and yea not enough people will do it to make it cause a difference..

[Locked]

I already don't bother looking at the news cause it's so useless most of the time.

I never had an interest in music.

I guess i just won't renew my GI subscription.

Books never taught me anything.

Wow dude you're serious?

[Flonne]

Wow dude you're serious?

At what? The news being useless? It is. Music being boring? Pretty much. Not renewing Game Informer? Good call too! Books not teaching? Sure; books are for entertainment only, without a ctrl+f they are vastly inferior to the internet if you know how to research. I couldn't go a week without novels, though...something about the weight and the feel and the smell of the paper, you just can't emulate that with an e-book reader.

[Locked]

At what? The news being useless? It is. Music being boring? Pretty much. Not renewing Game Informer? Good call too! Books not teaching? Sure; books are for entertainment only, without a ctrl+f they are vastly inferior to the internet if you know how to research. I couldn't go a week without novels, though...something about the weight and the feel and the smell of the paper, you just can't emulate that with an e-book reader.

Without the news you wouldn't be knowledgeable about anything in the real world. You would rather just shrug it off and play ignorant?
Music is everywhere even in places you don't think they are and they might even influence your decisions. Have you ever hummed a beat or known at least one song? That's music too. Or the ringtone on your phone or the alarm that you use to wake up. Music itself doesn't have to be only for entertainment and it has other purposes to it. Comparing mainstream music (top 40 hits) to other types of music such as religious, rock, metal, etc is just plain idiotic. While the internet may be superior in types of enlightenment, books have preceded it and have taught people for thousands of years. They're not "useless" at all.

[Viaje]

I read the title and all I wanted to do was to fake-knee-jerk-didn't-read-the-article-tirade about how the liberal media is killing this country and how they already have February.
It would have been hilarious, let me tell you.

But, since I'm here, I might as well try to be serious and address the actual article.

Um, yeah, good luck with that, Anonymous.
I mean, I realize that you're, ideally, a blob of people with no real power structure, and that structure lends itself to hit-or-miss ideas as much as any other, but come on...
Shutting down child pornography rings, that's a great and fantastic use of your time and energies.

Trying to convince people to stop buying pomegranate? For a month?
Wow, that's so hilariously optimistic that I just peed myself a bit from laughing.

That's not even to mention the fact that their list of things to boycott is hardly exhaustive.
Off of the top of my head, I don't see anything about canceling Netflix or Hulu subscriptions.

Not like it matters.
Even were this boycott to gather enough support, a month is hardly enough time to make a real impact.
If someone doesn't buy the newest album in March, they'll most likely just buy it in April.

I want these bills to die too, but one month isn't going to kill an ingrained system of corruption.

[Flonne]

I didn't say useless, I said inferior. With the options we have now, they are an obsolete method of data acquisition except on topics that simply are not recorded yet on the internet. And, no, not all music is boring, fair enough.

And yes, being ignorant of all but the most important things going on in the world is the only way I can stay sane these days. If I had to listen to the news babble on 24 hours a day about how thousands of people got raped last week or a new deadly virus that will wipe out humanity is discovered every month or the utterly stupid pomegranate politicians/businessmen/rednecks/liberals/conservatives/everyone pulls, I would either become suicidal or homicidal. Probably both. The veil of ignorance is my only method of protecting myself from these things; when I see something I don't agree with, it's very hard for me to just "let it go". Here on this site (which is one of the only things I use web browsers for nowadays), where I can't use that ignorance, I have to separate myself by either spending a long time composing a post or flat out waiting until I calm down, else I would seem like a raving lunatic. What it boils down to is, all I really care about in the news are the things that directly affect me, and I'm talking, directly as in, my home is burning to the ground on live broadcast. Everything else is superfluous and just adds to the stress of daily life; I don't handle stress well at ALL, and stacking that on top of everything else wrong with me, that creates a very precarious house of cards. If it builds up to a certain extent I have to leave the room when the TV is on even if it means missing a meal, or tell people to turn off their talk radio in the car, particularly my dad, who listens to Rush, one of the biggest doomsayers on the planet. The last time I put a ton of effort into overcoming this, I ended up in a mandatory intensive inpatient ward for a few weeks, and I'm very lucky I didn't have a permanent schizophrenic break.

The news is fine for some people, if you can handle it and you honestly want to know about all the horrible things going on in the world that may or may not ever affect you and you absolutely will not ever be able to do anything about regardless of how bad it is, then by all means. The only thing the general public can change is things like SOPA/PIPA, and I have a feeling that due to that backlash their next real pushes are going to be entirely kept under wraps until it is passed so we can't do that again.

[Shidoshi]

editted out, taken in private.

[KhainiWest]

I'm sure there's enough people doing it, I don't have too do it, plenty of people already participating.

[FenixR]

I'm sure there's enough people doing it, I don't have too do it, plenty of people already participating.

And thats how collective stuff usually fall apart.

[KhainiWest]

And thats how collective stuff usually fall apart.

That was my point lol