Protesters of CISPA take to the web, lack corporate enthusiasm
CISPA has inspired the internet protest of 400 websites Monday, as groups like Anonymous and some subsections of Reddit are protesting the bill that could remove some legal barriers that currently prevent tech companies and the government from sharing sensitive information about web users.
CISPA easily passed the house last week, despite strong opposition from privacy groups and President Barrack Obama, who is threatening to veto the current version of the bill, according to motherjones.com.
Unfortunately for Anonymous, the group responsible for organizing the blackout, the protest of CISPA isn’t nearly having the anticipated affect since most of the companies protesting are small, according to the Huffington Post.
The largest website taking part in the protest against CISPA is Reddit, and not the entire website is joining in the protest. Only certain subsections, which are controlled by users, are joining in the fight.
“We’ve been running ads against CISPA for the past few months, but we didn’t think the timing was right for us to participate in today’s blackout,” says Erik Martin, general manager at Reddit, the social news site, to motherjones.com. “We’re going to plan more action closer to the vote in the Senate, but in the meantime, the [independently controlled] subreddits are becoming kind of a lab for how you raise awareness on something important like this. Some of them are blacked out, others are posting about it.”
Other companies not participating in the CISPA protest are internet big-wigs like Google and Facebook, whose businesses are not directly affected by the proposed restrictions in CISPA. The two companies fought SOPA and PIPA last year because those bills would have impinged on a user’s capacity to share illegal content, a bill that would have deeply impacted their businesses.
This time around, CISPA only seeks to affect users and doesn’t cut into the profits of those large companies. What do you think of CISPA. Vent your anger on our message board below.
