I have been reading about this all week, but having a banner on my Mozilla home page reminded me to write my congressmen. I can't hurt to remind people about this -- especially considering the impact it is going to have on the users of this site.
if google, yahoo, ebay, reddit, mozilla, zynga, AOL, twitter, facebook, linkedIn, etc can do it then i can't see why HN (being all about dev and startup community) can't do it.
I think the HN crowd is more aware of SOPA than the visitors to those sites, but I think adding to the banner couldn't hurt (some people may have missed the SOPA stories from the last week).
Here's the question. Is it editorializing when your own existence is put in question?
Under SOPA, HN could be taken down with a simple link. One could create an account, post a link to some copyrighted material and then ask that HN be removed blocked at the DNS level.
So if HN is not willing to stand for that, what is willing to stand for?
The "can do it" refers to the question "could we have the SOPA censorship label up on HN's logo today?" (Similar to what was done at http://www.avc.com for example.)
The comment I am commenting on says:
"if google, yahoo, ebay, reddit, mozilla, zynga, AOL, twitter, facebook, linkedIn, etc can do it then i can't see why HN (being all about dev and startup community) can't do it."
So "can do it" doesn't refer to signing a letter (which can't be done now anyway) it refers to putting the censorship label over the logo. The majority of the companies mentioned did not do that which was the point that I was making.
It really doesn't hurt to remind people about this and make sure they take action. The future of open source software is at the core of HN, and it could really get affected by this legislation.
Is that a "no"? Because (if it wasn't obvious) that's what I suspect to be the case about these SOPA stories: that they tend to contain little if any new information about SOPA.
One of the few sites where people really care about this issue and half the comments in this thread are people wondering why we should even bother. I'd laugh if I wasn't so disappointed in you.
25 comments
[ 2.1 ms ] story [ 77.5 ms ] threadHappy feelings? Seems like you're preaching to the choir.
But that sort of editorializing does not seem consistent with the culture which has grown up around HN.
Under SOPA, HN could be taken down with a simple link. One could create an account, post a link to some copyrighted material and then ask that HN be removed blocked at the DNS level.
So if HN is not willing to stand for that, what is willing to stand for?
Last I checked, the HN hostname is inside the ycombinator.com DNS zone.
Please note that I am assuming that YC, and not HN, is the primary enterprise of the person or persons in a position to deal with these matters.
Of all of the above companies you listed, as of right now, it's only on reddit.com
Check out the logos at the bottom.
The comment I am commenting on says:
"if google, yahoo, ebay, reddit, mozilla, zynga, AOL, twitter, facebook, linkedIn, etc can do it then i can't see why HN (being all about dev and startup community) can't do it."
So "can do it" doesn't refer to signing a letter (which can't be done now anyway) it refers to putting the censorship label over the logo. The majority of the companies mentioned did not do that which was the point that I was making.
It really doesn't hurt to remind people about this and make sure they take action. The future of open source software is at the core of HN, and it could really get affected by this legislation.
It's coming, sooner or later, the only thing we can do is fight it like alcohol drinkers did with prohibition.