Anti-SOPA tools for webmasters and users alike
As more and more internet users get involved in the SOPA/PIPA debate, more and more tools have been developed by the techies among us to show just how serious we are about keeping our internet free. Everything from plugins to directories to mobile apps have launched in recent weeks. Here are just a few of them:
Websites
SOPA Track
SOPA Track is a mobile website that not only makes it a snap for you to find your Congressmen/women and their contact information, but also tells you which way they are most likely to vote on PIPA/SOPA.
Stop American Censorship
The Stop American Censorship website provides a variety of anti-SOPA tools. Everything from a form to send an email to your congress representatives, to petitions, to protest tools for Twitter and Facebook. It also has a good collection of informative articles and media.
Stop Internet Censorship by Protesting SOPA
A Facebook event scheduled to coincide with Web Blackout Day on the 18. The organizer is urging participants to post censored photo galleries to their walls/timelines.
Censoring Blogspot Blogs
Errata Security’s blog has a good tutorial on how to censor you Blogspot blog.
BlackoutSOPA.org
This website provides a small app for Twitter users to automatically generate and change their avatar to an anti-SOPA avatar image on their Twitter account.
Mobile Apps
Boycott SOPA
Boycott SOPA is an Android app that lets you scan bar codes on products and then compares that information to a list of over 800 companies to determine if it is created by or intimately related to a SOPA supporter. The purpose is to help the average consumer avoid purchasing products from such companies.
Boycott and Boycott Pro
An alternative app for boycotting products, this one says it makes it easy to be sure you’re not doing business with SOPA supporters or any other business with policies you don’t agree with.
Browser Plugins
No SOPA
No SOPA is a plugin for the Chrome web browser that notifies you if you are viewing the website of a known SOPA-supporter by displaying a bar at the top of the page.
Protest SOPA
Like the No SOPA plugin, Protest SOPA is a Chrome plugin that displays a notification bar when you browse any domain belonging to a known SOPA supporter.
DeSOPA
DeSOPA is a browser add-on for FireFox. According to its author, it is a proof of concept that SOPA will not help prevent piracy. DeSOPA works by contacting offshore domain name resolution services to obtain the IP address any requested website, and then accessing those websites directly via IP.
MAFIAAFire: ThePirateBay Dancing!
ThePirateBay Dancing! is another FireFox add-on for circumventing future SOPA blocks. Accoding to its author, the add-on automatically routes your website request via a random proxy. This not only has the effect of “unblocking” sites blocked via DNS/IP address at the ISP level, but also makes ‘tracking’ you next to impossible.
WordPress Blackout Day and Censorship Plugins
Reverse SOPA/Protect IP
This plugin acts as a reverse blacklist, turning the tables on known SOPA supporters by “blacklisting” their IP addresses and not allowing them to access your website. Help the author out by forwarding him the IP addresses of any SOPA supporters you may have received an email response from (see the linked website for more information) and spreading the word about the plugin.
SOPA Blackout
This WordPress plugin adds temporary 503 status and customisable page on your site to automatically join Web Blackout Day – 18th January 2012. (*this is the plugin I’ll be using here at NLB Creations on Blackout Day)
Stop SOPA
This WordPress plugin adds small protest box to your website. It also provides a “Blackout Day” option, which, when activated will cause your website to show black screen and return a 503 status on 18th January 2012, 8:00AM – 8:00PM.
SOPA Blackout Plugin
This WordPress plugin allows you to set SOPA blackout dates for your WordPress website, as well as a variety of options on who the anti-SOPA message is shown to. This plugin is SEO friendly with temporary redirects being used.
Simple Stop SOPA
This WordPress plugin will censor your site on January 18th between 8am and 8pm local time in protest of SOPA and PIPA. It is designed to be as simple as possible, and has no admin settings to configure. Just activate and let it do it’s thing.
Stop SOPA and PIPA Plugin
This WordPress plugin will schedule a temporary redirect for all of your incoming traffic to the official Stop SOPA page.
Stop SOPA Ribbon
This WordPress plugin will put a black ribbon with the words “Stop SOPA” on the top right corner of your website, linking to the American Censorship website.
Censor Me
This WordPress plugin is essentially an “off switch” for your website. Once activated, the site is mostly blacked out by a banner for the americancensorship.org website. Simply deactivate the plugin to turn your site back on.
These are just the ones I’ve come across. If you know of others not on the list, or have created something yourself, post a comment, and I’ll update the list.
[…] someone wants something for free, odds are they’ll find a way to get it one way or another. Tools to circumvent the effects of SOPA have already been developed, which just goes to show that, if you don’t understand the […]
[…] protests. What’s unique about the anti-SOPA/PIPA activist toolkit, however, was their arsenal of online tools designed to amplify and spread their message across the social web. The movement inspired many amateur and not-so-amateur media content producers to create videos, […]