In the past 48 hours there has been some criticism of tomorrow's planned web blackout to protest SOPA and PIPA. The most widely reported was Twitter CEO Dick Costolo's "that's just silly" tweet, which members of the press, eager to report a controversy, took out of context. In fact, Costolo was responding to the accusation that Twitter lacked the "cojones" to take a stand, and was clarifying his organization's view on what sort of stand was appropriate.

However, there has been some real criticism of the anti-SOPA protest. Paul Levinson thinks that "Wikipedia should not shut down on Wednesday... [they] could make the same point by putting up a page about SOPA which everyone who goes to Wikipedia would see... it is a wrongheaded, unnecessary move, and SOPA will be defeated without it."

Lauren Weinstein goes further, writing a post that advocates using splash pages instead of shutting sites down, and then later on posting this update which questions the value of the entire protest:

I might add that apart from the discussion above, history suggests that this type of protest -- likely to flood Congressional phone lines for a day or two -- is among the least effective, almost certainly to be relegated to the category of mass mailings and other directed protests. Personal letters and other unscripted communications with Congressional representatives can most definitely have a positive impact, but politicians have learned over the decades that the high volume, organized, "call your congressman" protests tend to be the least meaningful.

It is wrong to dismiss the importance of the web blackout to protest SOPA. The purpose of the protest is not merely to generate a flood of telephone calls to representatives. The purpose is to make the American people aware of the issue and of the Internet community's concerns.

It is not a coincidence that backpedalling on SOPA from Lamar Smith, Patrick Leahy, the House Majority leadership, and the Obama Administration, as well as the first in-depth television news coverage of the issue on MSNBC, came a few days before this protest. Heretofore the mainstream television news media had done almost no reporting on SOPA, and it was easy to dismiss the opponents as a small but vocal group. After the protest that will no longer be possible, so all of a sudden people are starting to distance themselves from the bills. This is a significant set of victories.

Wikipedia's participation is hugely important as it is one of the most prominent sites that chose to participate, and it reflects a communi... [ Read More (0.6k in body) ]