So long SOPA and PIPA, hello Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA), a law proposed last November to give the government new powers to secure networks and thwart copyright violators. It's finally up for a vote later this month, sparking protests this week in what's looking like another informational ramp-up to leverage public opinion against the bill's passage.
In George Orwell’s 1984, the Ministry of Truth employs a “memory hole” to eliminate inconvenient facts. If a previously published photo or record later proves to be embarrassing for the government, it is thrown down the hole. The facts are erased from the face of the earth and the world is led to believe that something that happened never actually happened. The European Commission last week sought to give citizens their own personal memory holes.
The SOPA blackout protest last week was an unprecedented event. Its massive success surprised even the activists who spurred the protest. So does this mean that we are entering the much-heralded era of Internet-powered citizen democracy? The answer is yes. And no.
Representative Lamar Smith (R-Tex.) released a statement saying he’d be shelving the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) bill he’d authored in light of recent criticism. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) issued a similar statement, saying that he’d be postponing Tuesday’s vote on the Protect I.P. Act (PIPA).
Google’s dropped its logo-shroud, Wikipedia’s returned from limbo, normal service in general has been resumed and all’s right with the world…except that SOPA and PIPA are still looming on Capitol Hill. So did yesterday’s blackout protests against these bills have an actual impact?
No matter what side of the SOPA/PIPA debate you may be on, it’d be hard to deny that one participant in yesterday’s internet blackout seemingly benefited more than others. If nothing else, the January 18 blackout proved just how much the internet at large loves (and maybe even needs) Wikipedia.
Internet-based protests against a pair of controversial anti-piracy bills gained momentum Wednesday, as several lawmakers dropped their support in the face of widespread opposition from the tech industry.
Google engineers have slowed down the search engine’s web crawlers, meaning sites that are blacked out today in protest of SOPA won’t suffer as much in Google’s search rankings.
If you thought that today’s blackout by Wikipedia, Reddit, the Cheezburger Network and other sites was a legitimate political protest against SOPA and PIPA, Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) chairman Chris Dodd would like to offer an alternative viewpoint, calling the blackouts “an abuse of power” as well as “dangerous and troubling.”
So it’s lights out for Wikipedia, a blacked-over logo for Google, Reddit closing up for 12 hours and thousands of others shuttering for a day to protest the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and PROTECT IP Act (PIPA) — what can you do if you don’t have a website that gets a bazillion hits a day?
With Wikipedia, Reddit and other sites offline today in protest of the Stop Online Piracy Act, you might be wondering “What’s so bad about SOPA, anyway?” Luckily, the answer to your question is just a couple of clicks away.
