SOPA: My Day of Protest

Yesterday I gave my small contribution to the SOPA STRIKE movement by blacking out my site using a design I created to reflect the eventual outcome of SOPA. It was a notice from the FTC that the site had been disabled for violations of the SOPA Act, and suggested that if the user desired more information they could file a Freedom of Information Act request, BY MAIL ONLY, at a snail mail address.

This blog is no Wikipedia, but it was very rewarding to do something creative and snarky that also had a positive outcome with regards to a subject I care about. I received several FB comments, emails, and texts to the effect of “Dude…did the FTC really shut down your site!?”

I will take these messages as more of a tribute to my own design skills than to the ease with which people would assume the FTC, or any government agency, has the present-day right to shut down a website. This was the outcome I was looking for, to raise awareness, but in an unexpected manner: I never thought anyone would take it seriously.

So it was a great day. ChrisBoyd.net spent a full 24 hours under blackout, and I unwittingly brought even more attention to this horrible, incredibly short-sighted bill. I also transferred all 12 of my domain names from GoDaddy, a supporter of and contributor to SOPA, to MediaTemple.

You can view the page that I used here. I also posted it as a Gist with the appropriate 503′s (so you don’t lose any points with Google), in case you need to use it for any future half-assed censorship bills our Congress might decide to bake up.

Posted from Houston, Texas, United States.