<story><title>The Day the Internet Didn’t Fight Back</title><url>http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/02/11/the-day-the-internet-didnt-fight-back/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>ItendToDisagree</author><text>The fact that Google&amp;#x2F;Yahoo&amp;#x2F;Facebook&amp;#x2F;Wiki didn&amp;#x27;t promote or get involved with this REALLY hurt the cause...&lt;p&gt;To many (read: The Majority) of people the above companies &lt;i&gt;are&lt;/i&gt; the internet. In the same way the people who think this way used to think AOL &lt;i&gt;was&lt;/i&gt; The Internet (Capitals important). It really is sad that this seems to be true and that a couple companies have so much influence on what the internet is and does. But it really did make it easy to downplay the whole thing by saying &amp;quot;If it was so important why didn&amp;#x27;t Google get involved?&amp;quot;</text></item><item><author>spenvo</author><text>&amp;quot;By late Tuesday, some 70,000 calls had been placed to legislators and roughly 150,000 people had sent their representatives an email.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;What was to be expected?  The offices of my Senators and Representatives were swamped all day with phone calls.&lt;p&gt;The author keeps paying lip-service to the comparison of this effort to SOPA&amp;#x2F;PIPA --- which was entirely different.  Those bills were a direct challenge to the internet as we knew it, and everyone (including the big players) moved in to participate.  That protest was about two game-changing bills with votes on the floor (all other paths for success had failed - if you&amp;#x27;re Google,Wikipedia, etc); this protest was about the status quo.&lt;p&gt;Our elected officials heard us today - from seemingly nowhere, that the &lt;i&gt;status quo&lt;/i&gt; isn&amp;#x27;t acceptable.  The verbiage directly called the kettle black on the supposed &amp;quot;FISA Reform Bill,&amp;quot; reminding politicians that the powder is dry if head too far off course.  And that (IMHO) makes a big statement.&lt;p&gt;I felt the post was unjustifiably negative[&amp;#x2F;defeatist] with a link bait title and lame observations.  It &lt;i&gt;would be great&lt;/i&gt; to see Google, Facebook, Wikipedia, etc. play a larger role and &amp;quot;see the bigger picture&amp;quot;-- especially given that companies like Microsoft have officially recognized dragnet surveillance as an &amp;quot;advanced persistent threat.&amp;quot; [0]  Again, it would be great, but it can&amp;#x27;t be &lt;i&gt;necessary&lt;/i&gt;.  We want their help, but we cannot &lt;i&gt;need&lt;/i&gt; it.&lt;p&gt;PS - It&amp;#x27;s defeatist to say the following: &amp;quot;internet protests will never change anything in Washington.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;The Powerbroker,&amp;quot; a Pulitzer-Prize winning biography praised by Aaron Swartz [1], conveys the following two lessons with regards to affecting change in government:  1.) the only thing which matters (from the perspective of a common man) is raising the political stakes in every manner possible, forcing the issue into the court of public opinion where politicians must pick sides in a very public affair.  2.) The &lt;i&gt;other things&lt;/i&gt; which matter are in conversations which you are not a part of. . . ... dig in.  This is a minor skirmish in a long war (of attrition) against the Est..&lt;p&gt;[0] - &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theverge.com/2013/12/5/5177554/microsoft-plans-server-encryption-against-nsa-snooping&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.theverge.com&amp;#x2F;2013&amp;#x2F;12&amp;#x2F;5&amp;#x2F;5177554&amp;#x2F;microsoft-plans-se...&lt;/a&gt;
[1] - &lt;a href=&quot;https://zolabooks.com/list/aaron-swartz-reading-list/1&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;zolabooks.com&amp;#x2F;list&amp;#x2F;aaron-swartz-reading-list&amp;#x2F;1&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>jebus989</author><text>So the press has picked up Wikipedia didn&amp;#x27;t get involved but what actually happened was:&lt;p&gt;* Jimmy Wales posted on his talk page inviting discussion on the issue [0]&lt;p&gt;* There was support for having articles on the main page all be related in some way to the topic of mass surveillance [0]&lt;p&gt;* A handful of editors then made a subpage and began plans for a request for comment (RfC)... [1]&lt;p&gt;Then said handful of people made a series of bungles and strange decisions (like naming the proposal &amp;quot;Surveillance awareness day&amp;quot; instead of associating with the protest) and ultimately didn&amp;#x27;t bring the RfC to the community for proper discussion.&lt;p&gt;[0] &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Jimbo_Wales/Archive_155#The_Day_We_Fight_Back&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;User_talk:Jimbo_Wales&amp;#x2F;Archive_...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Surveillance_awareness_day&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Wikipedia:Surveillance_awarene...&lt;/a&gt; (see history, talk page)&lt;p&gt;TL;DR Wikipedia didn&amp;#x27;t decide not to get involved in the protest, 2 or 3 editors dawdled and made bad decisions until we ran out of time to discuss it.</text></comment>
<story><title>The Day the Internet Didn’t Fight Back</title><url>http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/02/11/the-day-the-internet-didnt-fight-back/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>ItendToDisagree</author><text>The fact that Google&amp;#x2F;Yahoo&amp;#x2F;Facebook&amp;#x2F;Wiki didn&amp;#x27;t promote or get involved with this REALLY hurt the cause...&lt;p&gt;To many (read: The Majority) of people the above companies &lt;i&gt;are&lt;/i&gt; the internet. In the same way the people who think this way used to think AOL &lt;i&gt;was&lt;/i&gt; The Internet (Capitals important). It really is sad that this seems to be true and that a couple companies have so much influence on what the internet is and does. But it really did make it easy to downplay the whole thing by saying &amp;quot;If it was so important why didn&amp;#x27;t Google get involved?&amp;quot;</text></item><item><author>spenvo</author><text>&amp;quot;By late Tuesday, some 70,000 calls had been placed to legislators and roughly 150,000 people had sent their representatives an email.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;What was to be expected?  The offices of my Senators and Representatives were swamped all day with phone calls.&lt;p&gt;The author keeps paying lip-service to the comparison of this effort to SOPA&amp;#x2F;PIPA --- which was entirely different.  Those bills were a direct challenge to the internet as we knew it, and everyone (including the big players) moved in to participate.  That protest was about two game-changing bills with votes on the floor (all other paths for success had failed - if you&amp;#x27;re Google,Wikipedia, etc); this protest was about the status quo.&lt;p&gt;Our elected officials heard us today - from seemingly nowhere, that the &lt;i&gt;status quo&lt;/i&gt; isn&amp;#x27;t acceptable.  The verbiage directly called the kettle black on the supposed &amp;quot;FISA Reform Bill,&amp;quot; reminding politicians that the powder is dry if head too far off course.  And that (IMHO) makes a big statement.&lt;p&gt;I felt the post was unjustifiably negative[&amp;#x2F;defeatist] with a link bait title and lame observations.  It &lt;i&gt;would be great&lt;/i&gt; to see Google, Facebook, Wikipedia, etc. play a larger role and &amp;quot;see the bigger picture&amp;quot;-- especially given that companies like Microsoft have officially recognized dragnet surveillance as an &amp;quot;advanced persistent threat.&amp;quot; [0]  Again, it would be great, but it can&amp;#x27;t be &lt;i&gt;necessary&lt;/i&gt;.  We want their help, but we cannot &lt;i&gt;need&lt;/i&gt; it.&lt;p&gt;PS - It&amp;#x27;s defeatist to say the following: &amp;quot;internet protests will never change anything in Washington.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;The Powerbroker,&amp;quot; a Pulitzer-Prize winning biography praised by Aaron Swartz [1], conveys the following two lessons with regards to affecting change in government:  1.) the only thing which matters (from the perspective of a common man) is raising the political stakes in every manner possible, forcing the issue into the court of public opinion where politicians must pick sides in a very public affair.  2.) The &lt;i&gt;other things&lt;/i&gt; which matter are in conversations which you are not a part of. . . ... dig in.  This is a minor skirmish in a long war (of attrition) against the Est..&lt;p&gt;[0] - &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theverge.com/2013/12/5/5177554/microsoft-plans-server-encryption-against-nsa-snooping&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.theverge.com&amp;#x2F;2013&amp;#x2F;12&amp;#x2F;5&amp;#x2F;5177554&amp;#x2F;microsoft-plans-se...&lt;/a&gt;
[1] - &lt;a href=&quot;https://zolabooks.com/list/aaron-swartz-reading-list/1&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;zolabooks.com&amp;#x2F;list&amp;#x2F;aaron-swartz-reading-list&amp;#x2F;1&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>saalweachter</author><text>I &lt;i&gt;don&amp;#x27;t like it&lt;/i&gt; when corporations interject themselves into politics.  This goes for companies that support my politics as well as companies which oppose them.</text></comment>