NZ blacks out Internet to protest guilt upon accusation law

NZ blacks out Internet to protest guilt upon accusation law(creativefreedom.org.nz)

28 points by cesther 17 years ago | 10 comments

patio11 17 years ago |

Headline has some accuracy issues unless you buy "Japan ate an English muffin this morning" because a) I did and b) I'm in Japan.

Maybe "Group in NZ urges black out of personal pages to protest Guilt Upon Accusation law". Or if you wanted to grind the axe the other way, "Group in NZ urges black out of personal pages to protest anti-piracy law".

jackowayed 17 years ago |

Not that I would condone illegal activity, but why not disconnect the Internet at the lawmakers' office buildings?

Or, even better, after the 28th, setup a server in the office building hidden somewhere that's sharing a ridiculous amount of copyrighted material.

And do it in such a way that the police will find out. Then the police have to choose between breaking a stupid law and disconnecting the people who passed it.

pmjordan 17 years ago | |

Once this law is in effect, you ought to be able to DoS the lawmakers by just (frivolously) claiming they were infringing copyright. If different people keep doing this (DDoS effectively) this could be kept up for a while. I suspect there's a danger of having to cover costs/damages if they investigate the case and it turns out there was never any infringement, but incorrectly claiming copyright infringement is hardly going to be a criminal offense.

patio11 17 years ago | |

I would hate to see what "condoning" looks like for you.

jackowayed 17 years ago | | |

It looks more-or-less the same, except that I'm not kidding when I condone.

ars 17 years ago |

Flagged. Please change the title to be more accurate.

lastkarrde 17 years ago |

http://search.twitter.com/search?q=%23blackout

http://twitter.com/terrencewood/statuses/1214564779 - Our ISPs all have.

Please support us, I don't want to live with that law :S

tomjen 17 years ago |

Lawmakers don't care about protests unless they make them look bad, so don't waste your time. Now blackmail on the other hand... (handy hint, it will have no effect unless it is illegal or require a ridiculously high number of people)

holloway 17 years ago |

Thanks for your support cesther!

cookiecaper 17 years ago |

Cool, this expression is about as useful as boycotting gas companies for one day. Anyone who thinks things like this that go down on social networking sites scares the politicians is so naive and silly. The lawmakers aren't going to listen until their threatened with the loss of a big special interest or something arises that could potentially generate a large enough stink in the media that the population doesn't vote for them anymore.

Blacking out profile pictures on Facebook will do basically nothing to help. They need to demonstrate that a lot of people are really pissed off about this. They need something like the Anonymous Anti-Scientology demonstrations, not just a bunch of people that lawmakers perceive as angsty hipsters blacking out their social networking profiles for one day.

I agree that this law seems horrendous, so hopefully someone with a little more experience gets in front of it and figures out a way to stop the thing before it takes effect.

BigZaphod 17 years ago | |

I don't think the intention is to scare lawmakers with a protest online - it's about calling attention to it so more people put the pressure on the lawmakers in the usual ways. In light of that, even though I'm not from nor have ever visited New Zealand, I blacked out my Twitter avatar today, too. It could happen here someday. (True for any value of "here", IMO.)