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Tag: Black Out

  • Green Bay Packers Finally Sell Out, Avoid Blackout

    Football fans in Green Bay and Indianapolis can rest easy. You will be able to watch your football team on television this weekend.

    It’s hard to believe that Sunday’s Green Bay Packer’s game against the San Francisco 49ers was not sold out as of Thursday night. In fact, three of the four Wild Card weekend NFL games still had seats available. The only game completely sold out was the Eagles/Saints game in Philadelphia. Frigid weather conditions and the comforts of home kept fans from buying round one tickets for the Colts/Chiefs game in Indy (they actually can’t blame the weather since they play indoors) and the Bengals/Chargers game in Cincinnati.

    According to a very old arcane NFL rule that was established to make sure that football stadiums sold tickets, if a game was not sold out 72 hours before kickoff, local television markets would be required to blackout the game. The FCC fought that rule yesterday when Hurricane Hercules dumped snow throughout several areas of the country and an expected extreme cold front made even the most diehard fans reconsider taking a trip to the stadium.

    Fans were given an extra day to snatch up remaining tickets to avoid blackout. Colt’s Corporate Sponsor, Meijer, took care of the game in Indianapolis by buying up the remaining 1,200 seats for Saturday afternoon’s matchup. In an act of goodwill, the company has donated the seats to the Indiana National Guard, Wish for Our Heroes. Meanwhile, the Packers organization sold off their remaining tickets to various corporate partners.

    The word is still out for Cincy fans who have until 4 pm ET today to sell off their remaining tickets and avoid a blackout. Corporate sponsor Kroger has reportedly bought a chunk of tickets that they intend to donate to families of the military.

    Tell us what you think of the NFL blackout rule. Is it time to make a change?

    Image via Facebook

  • Wikipedia’s SOPA / PIPA Blackout Seen By 162 Million People

    Everybody make it through yesterday’s Internet-wide protest? Everyone still in one piece? Good. Now, let’s take a moment to consider the aftermath of Wikipedia’s protest of SOPA/PIPA yesterday.

    While reports are coming in that 4.5 million people signed Google’s anti-SOPA petition yesterday, Wikipedia has shared the information gathered from the 24-hour total blackout of their English-language page. The press release states that during the protest, 162 million people landed on the Wikipedia blackout page and that, of those visitors, 8 million U.S. readers looked up their representatives via Wikipedia in order to protest SOPA and PIPA. The report goes on:

    “The Wikipedia blackout is over and the public has spoken,” said Sue Gardner, Wikimedia Foundation Executive Director. “162 million of you saw our blackout page asking if you could imagine a world without free knowledge. You said no. You shut down the Congressional switchboards, and you melted their servers. Your voice was loud and strong.”

    During yesterday’s black out, people communicated their reactions on Twitter, which ranged from celebration and humor to unbelievably risible outrage (the latter of which was mostly students, so remember that when you think about how they’ll be in charge of a lot of things some day).

    Wikipedia points out that, after the blackout started, several related worldwide trends materialized on Twitter such as #factswithoutwikipedia, #sopastrike, and “Imagine a World Without Free Knoweldge.” Incredibly, in the initial hour of Wikipedia’s blackout, “#wikipediablackout constituted 1% of all tweet” and “more than 12,000 people posted comments of support on the Wikimedia Foundation’s blog post announcing the blackout.”

    Wikipedia sums up:

    For Wikipedia, this fight has never been about money, but about knowledge. As a community of authors, editors, photographers, and programmers, Wikipedians invite everyone to share and build upon the work already begun.

    In a little over a decade, Wikipedians have built the largest encyclopedia in human history. Wikipedia’s mission is to empower and engage people to document the sum of all human knowledge, and to make it available to all humanity, in perpetuity.

    The Internet has enabled creativity, knowledge, and innovation to shine. As Wikipedia and other websites went dark, readers directed their energy to protecting the free and open Internet.

    We thank our readers for their support.

    Jimmy Wales, Wikipedia’s founder and commander-in-chief, reflected on the “unprecedented, historic shuttering of the largest repository of free knowledge in the world”:

    @jimmy_wales
    Jimmy Wales    Now 35 Senators publicly opposing #PIPA, up from 5 last week! 41 no votes and we win. #wikipediablackout 6 hours ago via web · powered by @socialditto

    @jimmy_wales
    Jimmy Wales    Our thank you to the world http://t.co/7saONGFv and there is still a need for phone calls! 6 hours ago via web · powered by @socialditto

    Additionally, Wales humbly noted on his blog earlier today that, while he appreciates the kind sentiments thanking him for his bravery many supporters have sent his way, the “fight for free knowledge is for everyone”:

    I want to push back a little bit on it and reflect on where the real bravery is in the fight for free knowledge for everyone. I live in a country which respects the freedom of speech. I am at no risk of prison or physical violence or monetary fines for my views. If the worst that gets thrown at me is MPAA head Christopher Dodd saying that an Internet uprising is an “abuse of power” then I will survive just fine.

    I know of Wikipedia volunteers in authoritarian countries, though, who are incredibly brave. Hossein Derakhshan is a young man I first met at Wikimania 2005 in Frankfurt. A Wikipedia editor and blogger, he is serving a 19 and a half year sentence in Iran for his writings on the Internet.

    I know of a Chinese Wikipedian who was visited by the police for setting up a mirror of Wikipedia multiple times during the era when China banned Wikipedia.

    There are many more like them, all around the world.

    These, and people like them, are my heroes. They are the people of true courage. I’m a very fortunate man in life, and I’m proud to stand up for freedom of speech and the right to access to knowledge in every circumstance that I can. But my courage, if it is courage, is nothing compared to the courage of those who are really risking life and limb to speak truth to power.

    Let us take a moment today to honor them.

    So now that the scores are being tallied after the first round of Internet versus SOPA/Congress, how did yesterday’s Wikipedia blackout affect you? Were you one the millions who contacted your Congressional Representative? Chime in below with your comments/thoughts.

  • Fark.com Takes Humorous Approach To SOPA Blackout

    While some of the clueless minions who populate Twitter try and figure out where their Wikipedia went, the rest of us who actually pay attention to trends that might fall outside of our interests have noticed that many popular websites have gone “dark” in order to protest the apparently undying SOPA bill that, for some reason, Lamar Smith insists on resuscitating.

    One site in particular, however, has taken another approach. Instead of “blacking out” to protest SOPA, Fark.com has “gone white” in order to support the anti-piracy acts. In typical Fark fashion, frivolity reigns, but their message echoes what many other site owners are saying: “We don’t support SOPA,” only this time, it’s done with a tongue-in-cheek approach. Over at Fark.com, their white out in “support” of SOPA is for one reason and one reason only: the anti-piracy acts give them a perfect excuse to quit.

    From Fark’s “white out” explanation:

    While a bunch of other sites are going “dark” to protest SOPA/PIPA, we’re over the moon about the whole thing. Why? Honestly, we’ve been bringing you the latest news happening across the internet for 12 years, and we’re tired. And SOPA/PIPA is the perfect excuse to quit.

    The Fark admins continue their lament:

    While SOPA might be “almost dead,” it’s not quite all the way there, and under various drafts of both SOPA/PIPA, Fark could have its DNS assignment (the thing that turns an IP address, like 10.0.0.1, into words like Fark.com) revoked without notice simply for linking to content that could come under foreign copyright claims. This means, even if it is actual news in and of itself, if we link to it, we can be shut down. And thank God, cause we’re about ready to crack under the strain of being on top of the news all the time.

    A screenshot of the Fark.com welcome screen demonstrates their commitment to SOPA support:

    Fark SOPA

    Offering a quality website does take a lot of work, so Fark’s position is understandable. Drew Curtis’ crew also post a video explaining why we, the people, should support SOPA. It’s some compelling stuff that we should keep in mind the next time Lamar Smith explains why his anti-piracy act is worth supporting:


    I hope that’s clear enough for you to comprehend. If not, ask yourself this question, “Why should I support SOPA?” and watch it again.

    It should also be noted that, unlike other sites that have blacked out protesting SOPA, you can still access Fark.com’s content, and if you navigate to the fark.com/index.html address, you’ll bypass the site’s whiteout splash screen.