Grey Day And Blackout Days
Grey Day
You may notice that the very first graphic on our main entrance is rendered now in tones of grey. The purpose of this greyed out process is to honor Grey Day - a day when digital and 'Net artists call attention to what the world would be like if there were no incentive for artists to create art. Because the 'Net makes digital thievery so easy, the grey image used is to suggest what the world would be like without the colors of art. Digital art and artists make the 'Net the colorful place it is. Stealing online art robs digital artists of their paychecks.
Grey Day is officially celebrated on each October 1st. Our original and very colorful red-desert graphic will be returned to the main entrance on or about October 8th.
Blackout Days
In a related idea, Blackout Days came into being. Blackout Days are to protest the illegal use by many popular (though illegal) programs that change a webmaster's content without his permission and without paying him anything for the extra ads and links these programs illegally insert into the pages (violating US copyright and intellectual property laws). We call them illegal because we believe they violate known US copyright laws as well as intellectual property laws. Most countries have similar laws.
Some of these virii programs will add extra links to questionable content sites (porno and scams - Surf+ and Ezula do this), while others will actually replace the ads a webmaster has on his pages to pay him for running the site (Gator does this) with ads having nothing to do with the site (for which the webmaster receives nothing). A stealth superimposition is used to make the illegally placed advertising appear to actually be a part of the page.
This type of software is loosely called ScumWare, and these programs are also loosely called virii as they spy on the infected machine and surfer, and are very difficult to remove. Blackout Days is to remind surfers that without the correct webmaster or website receiving advertising monies from ads shown, the 'Net as we know it will likely disappear in the next twenty-four (24) to thirty-six (36) months. Current advertising rates are at their lowest in history - even losing just 10% of ad revenues will be enough to bankrupt most popular sites. Advertising gives webmasters and website owners the revenue needed to not only upgrade their sites, it pays for bandwidth and servers fees. No money means no sites.
Blackout Days are officially celebrated the first week of October in conjunction with Grey Day.
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