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No, the Problem Is You Have a Cause Nobody Supports!
I get such a chuckle when knuckleheads issue press statements that confirm what they're trying to deny or, worse yet, just miss the point.
Today comes this gem;
“The problem for the content industry is they just don’t know how to mobilize people,” said John P. Feehery, a former Republican leadership aide and executive at the motion picture lobby.
No, Mr. Feehery, the problem is that your cause is one nobody is going to mobilize around unless they are content providers interested in maintaining archaic ideas about how to do business in an Internet-dominated 21st Century. It wouldn't matter if your clients were the most savvy social networkers on the planet; those who are fans of their products are not going to support things like the two ridiculous bills pending in the U.S. Congress these days to protect their intellectual property. And that audience will never be a fraction as large as the number of Internet users who see their freedom as of overriding importance.
The answer isn't to try to figure out how to mobilize millions of supporters. The answer is to figure out how to publish and price your content on the Net with a win-win model. You're the creative ones. Figure it out.
Wikipedia Blackout Ill-Advised, Wrongly Targeted
Wikipedia has announced that it will black out the English-language version of its hugely popular site tomorrow in protest of pending legislation in the U.S. Congress that would, in their mind and the minds of millions of others, open a wide door to censorship of the Internet.
I am in complete agreement and sympathy with Wikipedia's position but I think they could and should have found a smarter way to demonstrate their opposition. By blacking out the site, they inconvenience millions of users, a minuscule number of whom are government employees of any stripe. What makes them think the firmly ensconced, well-trained corporate cronies who occupy legislative seats in D.C. will notice or care?
Instead, they could have:
- rerouted all incoming traffic to a page explaining the pending rules and why they oppose them, thus educating without interference;
- replaced the top half of all pages with an explanatory black banner (larger than the one they have on their site today to warn of the blackout) so users would get the same message but still be able to scroll to their content;
- selectively blocked only DC-area IP addresses (I know that's not 100% feasible or effective, but I bet they could figure out how to have a big impact that way on folks who are actually the idiots making the decision).
In addition, several of the 6,000+ comments on the Wikipedia page announcing the blackout suggested that Wikipedia needs to deal with the real problem: an increasingly restrictive U.S. government that seems to be operating more and more from fear and which might well impose well-intentioned more draconian measures in the future. Wikipedia needs to divorce itself from the United States and its rapidly disappearing ideals of freedom.
I'm sure there are many other ways they could have found to make their feelings known without cutting out millions of school kids, college students, researchers and journalists who rely on Wikipedia to do their work. (Oh, and I'm not one of those, so this has no real impact on me personally.)
