{"id":130995,"date":"2012-05-30T12:02:42","date_gmt":"2012-05-30T16:02:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.prosebeforehos.com\/?p=130995"},"modified":"2012-12-26T16:04:07","modified_gmt":"2012-12-26T21:04:07","slug":"internet-activism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.prosebeforehos.com\/article-of-the-day\/05\/30\/internet-activism\/","title":{"rendered":"The Power And Problems Of Internet Activism"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Article:<\/strong> From SOPA to Cispa: The Power And Problems Of Internet Activism<\/a> by Ryan Nafziger in The Speckled Axe.<\/p>\n

The Text:<\/strong> On January 18, 2012, an already declining piece of legislation under the name of House Bill 3261 was blown out of the sky. Opposition had gone viral. Social media sites were boiling with the same collective anger that Joseph Kony would incite just a few months later. Internet institutions like Wikipedia and Reddit as well as thousands of smaller sites shut down for the day. Google claimed to have collected seven million signatures in opposition. Several of SOPA\u2019s Congressional sponsors quickly withdrew their support.<\/p>\n

Just two days later, the bill\u2019s original sponsor, Texas Republican Lamar Smith, pulled the bill from the house floor while acknowledging the concerns about SOPA\u2019s potential impact on free speech and the discourse of information over the Internet. The Internet had won. An army comprised of tweets, profile pictures and status updates had defeated industry giants like the RIAA and MPAA.<\/p>\n

Almost four months later, a similar bill sits before the House and I bet you haven\u2019t seen many Facebook status updates about it. That bill is House Bill 3523, or the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (called CISPA). CISPA differs from SOPA in purported aim to stop online security threats instead of online piracy, but its danger is the same. In essence, CISPA places our private information in the hands of government and corporations without due process. If Facebook thinks you\u2019re a security threat, it can take your private information and give it to the government without a search warrant. Thanks to the broad wording of the bill, theft of intellectual property constitutes a security threat. Any illegal music, movies you download \u2013 or even that Shepard Fairey Obama poster you were so excited about changing your profile picture back to after these four long years \u2013 are potential grounds for the seizure of your information and its sharing between government and corporate intelligence organizations.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

So what explains the different response in internet activism between SOPA and CISPA? It\u2019s not like in the last hundred days Americans have jumped the ideological fence. Why isn\u2019t Wikipedia shutting down over this? Why haven\u2019t you already read fourteen CISPA articles today (and apologies if you have)?<\/p>\n

It\u2019s because you got so sick of hearing about SOPA. You don\u2019t want to read another article about some bill that some guy on the Internet is claiming will ruin America because you\u2019re fatigued. Admit it: you\u2019d rather forward another one of your aunt\u2019s funny dog picture emails or \u2018like\u2019 another Facebook post. You\u2019ve moved on \u2013 and that is the biggest weakness of Internet activism. It has a refractory period. After the powerful collective synergy that can accompany Internet activism comes crashing down like a wave, it goes back to sea. We\u2019re left patting ourselves on the back thinking, \u201cThank God that\u2019s over, I really just want to see more pictures of pets and weddings and what my friends made for dinner.\u201d<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, that\u2019s not how the rest of the world works. When KONY 2012 made the rounds, it reached over 80 million views in less than three weeks. If you have a Facebook profile and a pulse you\u2019ve heard of the short, controversial documentary about Ugandan guerilla fighter Joseph Kony. For a few weeks the Internet was outraged because of the war crimes committed by Kony. But a small handful of weeks later, who cared? Nothing had been done and Kony was old news. Any remaining outrage was over inconsequential inaccuracies in the documentary or the humiliating behavior of its creator Jason Russell. The Internet operates at a different speed than the real world; the half-life of digital outrage often peters out before it even leaves a footprint.<\/p>\n

Famed humanitarian, philanthropist and would-be Internet activist Niccolo Machiavelli once said, \u201cOf mankind we may say in general they are fickle, hypocritical, and greedy of gain.\u201d The different reactions to SOPA and CISPA seem to illustrate that point. It\u2019s not that the Internet community doesn\u2019t care \u2013 it really does, as the success of SOPA opposition shows \u2013 it\u2019s just that it has limits.<\/p>\n

If the Internet is going to succeed as a tool for change, it must convert quick bursts of support into equally quick results. Activists will have to organize the mass attention they\u2019ve received and achieve more than \u201craising awareness\u201d. The key to a successful online campaign isn\u2019t getting 80 million people to listen to what you have to say \u2013 it\u2019s getting just a few of those people to actually do something.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Article: From SOPA to Cispa: The Power And Problems Of Internet Activism by Ryan Nafziger in The Speckled Axe. The Text: On January 18, 2012, an already declining piece of legislation under the name of House Bill 3261 was blown out of the sky. Opposition had gone viral. Social media sites were boiling with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":49,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[259],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\nThe Power And Problems Of Internet Activism<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"If the Internet is going to succeed as a tool for change, it has to convert quick bursts of activism into equally quick results.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.prosebeforehos.com\/article-of-the-day\/05\/30\/internet-activism\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Power And Problems Of Internet Activism\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"If the Internet is going to succeed 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