[Foundation-l] Fwd: Wikipedia is considering going dark to protest SOPA and PIPA

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On 14 January 2012 12:20, Yaroslav M. Blanter <putevod at mccme.ru> wrote:

> On Sat, 14 Jan 2012 10:58:41 +0000, Tom Morris <tom at tommorris.org> wrote:
>
>> I think the concern will be dependent on whether Commons is covered in
>> the blackout (and whether the 'full' shutdown goes ahead or the
>> 'pop-up plus banners' that seems to be getting most traction on
>> enwiki).
>>
>> I'm seeing a rough consensus for action on English Wikipedia, and
>> German Wikipedians seem to be up for acting in solidarity, but, as
>> I've said on the page on enwiki, I don't see how enwiki consensus for
>> a SOPA action ought to bind other proejcts including Commons and the
>> English sister projects.
>>
>
> Commons most likely will only run a banner. There is currently a straw
> poll abut it. The blackout has not even been seriously discussed. (And I
> personally think it will not be a good idea because many hotlinks to
> Commons files would just disappear without any explanation in case of the
> blackout - not something which add us much credibility).

Is there talk about blackout on the files or just the pages?  I don't
think a blackout on Commons would have the effect you described.
'Hotlinked images' from Commons would continue to work as normal.
Including images in a blackout is usually a bit more work than usual
(Apache rewrite rules, etc.), while pages can simply be caught with a
quick and dirty MW-extension (or even just JavaScript).