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Living in a Dark and Threatening Hollow: Evaluating the SOPA/PIPA Blackout

On Wednesday, January 18, 2012 we blacked out all 14 blogs in the Boles Blogs Network as part of a wide and grand protest against the SOPA/PIPA threat.

We gladly joined that blackout because, on December 29, 2011 — in an article titled Staring Down the SOPA Threat from the Public Square — I wrote this call to action:

If you don’t want SOPA to see the light of day — forget Washington.  Pressure the companies that support SOPA.  Hit them with a cudgel they understand:  Losing your money and ruining their reputation in the marketplace.  Don’t give your money to pro-SOPA companies.  Write about pro-SOPA companies and humiliate them in the public square of human opinion.  It is your moral duty to stand up for free speech and crush the censorship that creeps upon you to silence your hands and ears and eyes.

Continue reading → Living in a Dark and Threatening Hollow: Evaluating the SOPA/PIPA Blackout

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The Great 2003 Blackout

A month ago, sitting on the uptown train, the lights suddenly went out in Penn Station, followed by the emergency lights, and then the lights on the train. After a Dalek-like voice asked us to exit the building, I began to suspect a local blackout. It turned out to be a little bit more complicated than that – surely also suspect to a number of conspiracy theories, though I am inclined to doubt it was anything that serious.

Continue reading → The Great 2003 Blackout