The approach is particularly creative: drive home the feeling of censorship by allowing some users to "censor" other users.

I wish they had followed through strongly on this. There's a hard-to-miss link that lets you opt-out of having your photos censored, and if you're visiting a blacked-out photo flickr gives the anti-PIPA spiel and presents a button to "show it anyway." If they were trying to demonstrate what SOPA/PIPA would make the internet like, shouldn't they just bite the bullet and make these photo black-outs permanent for a day? The idea is great but its implementation is pretty weak, it won't actually get people worked up.

The goal isn't really to get people "worked up", it's to raise awareness. You've completely missed the point, and Flickr's method is brilliant because it brings intuition to the impact of what SOPA may actually do.

But if the demonstration is just for a day, why does it still have to be so wishy-washy? It's imaginary. People would take it more seriously if it was really out of their control.

Seems to be having exactly the desired effect:

"Hey @flickr, if you want to let members blackout their own photos as a protest, great. Letting anyone blackout anyone else's photo? Stupid."

https://twitter.com/#!/fraying/statuses/159702033971150848

fraying == Derek Powazek == someone with close connections to Flickr who, besides that, is a really super smart guy who i'd assume would have got what they were trying to do.

You better not darken my photos if I'm paying for the service.

Just think how you'll feel if the SOPA or PIPA bills pass and there is no "Show my website anyway" button... 'Cause you can say that all you want, but if one of these bills pass and if the idiots deem it necessary, your content will get "darkened" regardless of how much money you paid to host it somewhere (maybe not the same way flickr is doing it, but still... to the same point).

I think everyones photos shouldn't be exempt, including the whitehouse photos! This is just a small taste of what is possible.

It certainly highlights one downside of using a paid-for shared service over your own self-hosted version. Flickr could be blocked due to another user, whereas my own hosting can only be blocked due to me

If an accuser makes a mistake and you're unreachable for 5 days, your own self-hosted version could be blocked.

Pro members are not exempt from the blackout.

"Update 9:27am January 18, 2012: We removed the 10 limit, you can darken to your dark heart’s dark desire."

http://blog.flickr.net/en/2012/01/18/pipa-sopa/

All these positive comments are surprising. I find this to be a very bad idea. Flickr is a service (unlike HN) that some people depend on, and that some people pay for. So Flickr is saying that, even if I pay for their service, they might deny it to me, at the whims of other users?

Flickr is showing themselves to be untrustworthy -- and possibly in breach of contract. I would suggest not relying on them.

Isn't there an opt-out mechanism so that your photos won't be darkened? I assume they put this in here because there are professional photographers on the site.

Well, that's nice. But still, having told them I want a service, and having paid for it, I am now required to notify them that I still want to get the service that I already paid them for?

These sites believe that they face an existential crisis due to this proposed legislation. Slightly impacting the service today to save it for the long term is clearly worth the tradeoff, if it's necessary.

Well, I guess a number of people disagree with me. And I can accept that (although I still disagree). But I think I should point out that "worth the tradeoff" is not the issue I'm talking about. For example, suppose I pay for something at a store, but the store refuses to give it to me, because they're protesting something. We can certainly ask whether the store's policy is "worth the tradeoff", but is that really the question we should be asking?

But that's not at all like the situation at hand. They're not refusing anything — it's only for one day, and if you don't want to participate, you don't have to. What you are complaining about is a minor inconvenience at worst.

They're not protesting "something". They're protesting a law which they believe has a good chance of passing, and which will likely put them out of business if passed.

Now, should they interfere with your paid service because of that? I don't know. But it's not cut and dried either way. The best would be for the law to go away and for your service to continue without interruption. But it doesn't look like that's possible at the moment. You have to choose one, and neither one is something they "should" do.

Yea, read the entire article please!

To bad the Whitehouse photo-stream is exempted.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/whitehouse/

The photos are darkened for me.

Interesting, I am not in the US, so perhaps that is the reason. Slightly odd though, because I can darken and see darken pictures in other streams.

Must've been a temporary mistake. The whitehouse's flickr account is definitely opted-out. None of their photos are darkened.

At least all the photos on the first page of the photostream are darkened for me. Here's a screenshot of the first picture: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/24903613/ss/flickr-whitehouse-sopa.p...

Are you located outside the U.S.? It could also be possible that it changed in the last few hours.

My biggest complaint is that it's not easy to automate blacking out every photo of every SOPA supporter.

It is, but it involves YQL, API keys and more time than I want to dedicate.

I like this feature.

I changed my Gravatar, g+, and FB images to black squares today to solicit whys from my networks.

The wording on this was confusing enough that I thought Flickr was claiming I'd opted-in to black out my photos.

We are no doubt pissing off Congress to no end. I wonder what the approval rating of Congress will become after this stunt? 5%? 2%?

Do you really think 95% of the population either already disapproves of the Congress or has been on the internet today and ran into a darkened site and thought about the issue?

Congressional support is something like 13.3% with 83% disapproval.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/other/congressional_...

HuffPo has a funny take on that, saying that more people approve of "Porn, Polygamy, BP Oil Spill, 'U.S. Going Communist'" than of Congress.

So no it's probably not unreasonable to suppose that somewhat less than half (12/27) of the ~27% people who approve of or are neutral to Congress saw a darkened site and thought about the issue. I know that I got questioned about it at work by the less technical folks.

Yeah, those Congressmen are all trying to read Reddit and Flickr and shaking their fists at us all!

No, I don't see that happening.

I'm pretty sure he meant that all of these sites drawing attention to SOPA and PIPA are upsetting Congress. Not that they were trying to get to Reddit.