# Will the SD go dark this Wednesday, January 18th? **URL:** \ **Category:** About This Message Board\ **Created:** [January 16, 2012, 10:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-the-sd-go-dark-this-wednesday-january-18th/609737 "2012-01-16T22:25:27Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 6\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![srzss05](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/898d66/32.png) [@srzss05](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/srzss05)\ **Post date:** [January 19, 2012, 4:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-the-sd-go-dark-this-wednesday-january-18th/609737/61 "2012-01-19T16:10:12Z")
> [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](#): > > What do you think people did before the Internet existed? Exactly. I don’t know where you think you are going with this, or how it makes Wikipedia non-trivial. ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [January 19, 2012, 4:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-the-sd-go-dark-this-wednesday-january-18th/609737/62 "2012-01-19T16:26:20Z")
> [@Oakminster](#): > > “Held hostage”? Really? It’s wiki-fucking-pedia, not the launch codes to the missile silos. The damn thing could vanish from the face of the earth tomorrow, and the earth would continue to revolve around the sun. It might take a little longer to find out who guest starred in episode 19 of some obscure television show, but otherwise, so what? More than that, the content is free. If it goes dark permanently, you just get the version from either Google or any of the other mirrors, stick it on a new server, give it a new name, and bingo, you’ve got the site back. Yeah, it’s work, but it’s not as if Wiki is gone forever. That’s the beauty of free content. The real importance of the blackout is just that it (1)informs people who don’t go elsewhere on the net, (2) proves that people are willing to work together and try to stop this, and (3)is much more newsworthy and finally got this thing out on the news outside the Internet, where it’s seemed to be mostly overlooked (unsurprisingly). I mean, even Stephen Colbert couldn’t discuss it without having a SOPA supporter on. And that’s the only time I saw it on TV. ---
**Author:** ![elmwood](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/elmwood/32/3060_2.png) [@elmwood](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elmwood)\ **Post date:** [January 19, 2012, 4:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-the-sd-go-dark-this-wednesday-january-18th/609737/63 "2012-01-19T16:46:36Z")
Hasn’t the SDMB been offline enough over the past decade to make up for Dark Wednesday? ---
**Author:** ![Evil\_Captor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/f17d59/32.png) [@Evil\_Captor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Evil_Captor)\ **Post date:** [January 19, 2012, 5:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-the-sd-go-dark-this-wednesday-january-18th/609737/64 "2012-01-19T17:56:19Z")
The mainstream media[pretty much ignored SOPA](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g91t4O_q8kk) before the blackout, according to Media Matters. ---
**Author:** ![Kal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/9de053/32.png) [@Kal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kal)\ **Post date:** [January 19, 2012, 6:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-the-sd-go-dark-this-wednesday-january-18th/609737/65 "2012-01-19T18:19:49Z")
> [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](#): > > What do you think people did before the Internet existed? Relied on porn found in the woods. ---
**Author:** ![cmyk](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cmyk/32/3353_2.png) [@cmyk](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cmyk)\ **Post date:** [January 19, 2012, 8:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-the-sd-go-dark-this-wednesday-january-18th/609737/66 "2012-01-19T20:47:08Z")
The triviality of any particular organization doesn’t much matter in this case. The SDMB is just as trivial as Wikipedia, but if a bill was about to be passed that would fundamentally change posting and modding here to the point of never linking or quoting any copyrighted material, the government could simply have this site shut down if they were made aware of too much of such activity. It probably would never come to that, but I’m sure the board rules here would change dramatically, and imagine what it would do to the internet at large. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-the-sd-go-dark-this-wednesday-january-18th/609737.md?page=3)