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Feb. 1st, 2012
Black March
Feb. 1st, 2012 02:12 pmSo, I guess this is still happening...
http://www.tumblr.com/tagged/black+march
First of all, the Black March was a horror inflicted on POWs during World War 2. Forced to march for 86 days, over 1,500 Americans were either executed or died from sickness.
But hey, who cares about that when we can have a catchy title, right?
Second of all, the best thing to do during a recession is obviously punishing those on your side. One of my jobs is an Acquisition Editor with an online publisher. This boycott says not to buy books. This punishes the smaller publishers like mine. We don't have that kind of money to take a major hit and we never supported PIPA or SOPA.
I'm guessing the majority of independent artists, authors and filmmakers would tell you the same.
Now, there is a more specific boycott where you only involve these companies:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_organizations_with_official_stances_on_the_Stop_Online_Piracy_Act#Supporting_organizations
This affects my other two jobs. My retail job sells a lot of things on that list like Marvel, Disney, L'Oreal, Estee Lauder and I saw another list that included Liz Claiborne so that would also be Lucky and Juicy brands. My third job is writing for a Disney blog so am I supposed to not do my job for a month because it's encouraging spending at Disney?
What about people who work directly for those companies?
How are critics supposed to do their job when not every film or CD is given to them free of charge?
What about ethical dilemmas? If Red Tails had come out in March, would you still had boycotted it because it was affiliated with Fox?
I ask because we went to Red Tails to specifically support it and other films with African-American casts that aren't produced by Tyler Perry.
Now, the original boycott said nothing of television but the SOPA/PIPA supporters list does list the majority of television providers. If you don't watch any television for those four weeks, you could be condemning a show to death, like Smash. In this environment, it only takes as little as one or two weeks of horrible ratings for a show to be canceled.
I'm also afraid it makes us look ridiculous. We're at our best when we're banding together against a common cause across a multiple of social platforms, combining physical mail with email, phones with Twitter, Facebook with Tumblr and everything in between until people are forced to notice even with a media blackout.
This might be our wings made out of wax where we attempt to fly too high though. It is not possible for everyone to even do this. It is not likely that many others will do this. Then, we will look like fools for the attempt and the media will be happy that they proved their superiority.
Why aren't we battling ACTA the way we did SOPA/PIPA instead of this?
http://www.tumblr.com/tagged/black+march
First of all, the Black March was a horror inflicted on POWs during World War 2. Forced to march for 86 days, over 1,500 Americans were either executed or died from sickness.
But hey, who cares about that when we can have a catchy title, right?
Second of all, the best thing to do during a recession is obviously punishing those on your side. One of my jobs is an Acquisition Editor with an online publisher. This boycott says not to buy books. This punishes the smaller publishers like mine. We don't have that kind of money to take a major hit and we never supported PIPA or SOPA.
I'm guessing the majority of independent artists, authors and filmmakers would tell you the same.
Now, there is a more specific boycott where you only involve these companies:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_organizations_with_official_stances_on_the_Stop_Online_Piracy_Act#Supporting_organizations
This affects my other two jobs. My retail job sells a lot of things on that list like Marvel, Disney, L'Oreal, Estee Lauder and I saw another list that included Liz Claiborne so that would also be Lucky and Juicy brands. My third job is writing for a Disney blog so am I supposed to not do my job for a month because it's encouraging spending at Disney?
What about people who work directly for those companies?
How are critics supposed to do their job when not every film or CD is given to them free of charge?
What about ethical dilemmas? If Red Tails had come out in March, would you still had boycotted it because it was affiliated with Fox?
I ask because we went to Red Tails to specifically support it and other films with African-American casts that aren't produced by Tyler Perry.
Now, the original boycott said nothing of television but the SOPA/PIPA supporters list does list the majority of television providers. If you don't watch any television for those four weeks, you could be condemning a show to death, like Smash. In this environment, it only takes as little as one or two weeks of horrible ratings for a show to be canceled.
I'm also afraid it makes us look ridiculous. We're at our best when we're banding together against a common cause across a multiple of social platforms, combining physical mail with email, phones with Twitter, Facebook with Tumblr and everything in between until people are forced to notice even with a media blackout.
This might be our wings made out of wax where we attempt to fly too high though. It is not possible for everyone to even do this. It is not likely that many others will do this. Then, we will look like fools for the attempt and the media will be happy that they proved their superiority.
Why aren't we battling ACTA the way we did SOPA/PIPA instead of this?
