In a show of solidarity with the Internet community, a group of popular websites will “black out” tomorrow to demonstrate what the world might look like if SOPA and PIPA pass. Participating websites include Wikipedia.org, Reddit.com, Mozilla.org and BoingBoing.com.
As the world’s largest DNS provider, more than 30 million people rely on OpenDNS to connect to the Internet. Without functioning DNS, you’d need to know the IP address for every website you visit. And lots of parents, schools and businesses rely on our website to manage their DNS and Web security settings. All that said, taking our service or website down for a day is not an effective way for OpenDNS to show our firm opposition to the bills. Since folks on Twitter and elsewhere are asking, we will be showing our support tomorrow, but we will not be taking OpenDNS offline.
What is an effective way for us to show our opposition is to censor search results on our Guide. One component of our service, OpenDNS Guide, helps give users a more thoughtful next step when navigating the Internet than the dead end of a 404 error. So when users of our free services attempt to visit a website that’s having technical issues, we show them search results that are based on what they entered in their search bar.
For one business day starting at 8 AM Eastern time tomorrow, we will randomly redact the text of search results appearing in OpenDNS Guide pageviews. This is not a decision we take lightly and we’re fully aware it can, and will, create a frustrating experience both for our users, and for owners of websites being censored. But with 30 million+ users we have the equivalent of a megaphone on the Internet. We feel it’s our responsibility to demonstrate the near-random methodology SOPA and PIPA propose to determine those websites contributing to piracy, and also what the Internet would look like if their fate was to be blocked.
It seems the efforts of the Internet community are making progress in the fight against these ill-informed bills. The White House issued a response, and now Lamar Smith has followed Patrick Leahy’s example, backpeddling and vowing to remove the DNS-blocking component of SOPA. Keep it up, friends.
OpenDNS To Participate in Anti-SOPA Protests - Forbes
[...] statement at the OpenDNS blog [...]
posted on January 17th, 2012 at 2:16 pm
John Riley
Thank you OpenDNS. I strongly agree with this fight!
posted on January 17th, 2012 at 4:47 pm
Dave Mac
Thank you OpenDNS for showing your support! (I’m going to have to TRY to enter a bad link to see your redacted redirect page tomorrow!)
I’ve been trying to follow your link in the above blog post to the whitehouse.gov petition page to no avail.
Finally found it, seems if ‘the whitehouse’ ‘responds’ to a petition it causes it to be closed to further signatures, and I think your link might be going to the pre-response page.
I found it here (at least I THINK it’s the same petition, I’ve found some duplicates on the site…):
https://wwws.whitehouse.gov/petitions#!/petition/veto-sopa-bill-and-any-other-future-bills-threaten-diminish-free-flow-information/g3W1BscR
Dave Mac ^.^
posted on January 17th, 2012 at 5:40 pm
Gary Chisholm
Thank you for supporting this issue and creating awareness to the people that use this site and have no idea what is happening in the US gov’t.
The Neighbor to the North in Canada – Because this effects the world.
posted on January 17th, 2012 at 9:54 pm
UT99ExpressP45
I agree with this. We already have way to many bills operating now that take away even more of our freedom. Patriot Act, DMCA, PIPA, to name a few others.
“If you don’t stand for something, you’ll fall for anything”
posted on January 17th, 2012 at 11:10 pm
Stu Rees
We have five new SOPA cartoons at http://www.stus.com/techwars that anyone can use to raise awareness.
posted on January 17th, 2012 at 11:31 pm
Why The Web Is Going Dark Over SOPA & PIPA
[...] to black-out its page today. OpenDNS will continue resolving web sites, but error pages it delivers will have some text randomly blacked-out to illustrate [...]
posted on January 18th, 2012 at 2:34 am
Wikipedia, Google blackout sites to protest SOPA - TECHNOLOGY GADGETS – TECHNOLOGY GADGETS
[...] another, have assimilated a blackout: Metafilter, a Consumer Electronics Association, BoingBoing, OpenDNS, WordPress, a Electronic Frontier Foundation, and a Internet’s many renouned dinosaur comic [...]
posted on January 18th, 2012 at 5:42 am
Tom Foremski
It’s a shame Google didn’t adopt your demonstration of what a post SOPA Internet might look lie. Google is even circumventing Wikipedia’s blackout by giving full access to copies of Wikipedia pages hosted on its own servers.
posted on January 18th, 2012 at 1:50 pm
Google helps circumvent Wikipedia's anti-SOPA protest | ZDNet
[...] Ulevitch, founder and CEO of OpenDNS wrote about the blacking out of its search [...]
posted on January 18th, 2012 at 2:15 pm
Dr. Tom Burnett
I have 22 domains with GoDaddy. I have no idea where to take them – and I can’t find an unbiased recommendation.
I want to support the anti-SOPA movement, but I am not an expert at this sort of thing. With 30 million users, you must be.
Would someone help me off the record, please?
a hui hou
Tom
posted on January 20th, 2012 at 1:41 pm