Last Wednesday ( January 18 ) , Wikipedia and other siteswent darkin a protest of pending legislation before the US Congress . Now that the dust has settled , here are some details of what happened .
Let the Backpedaling Begin
mass of multitude online celebrate all this news by saying " SOPA is dead " and paint a picture that PIPA is on life - bread and butter . This may or may not be dead on target ; many legislators are saying that they want to rewrite the bill and then pass some revised sapidity of them ( ahem , have y' all view theOPEN Act ? We ’ve got your revision decently here ) . This is either legislator trying to graciously back by , or they ’re say exactly what they think of – which is that , with some tweaks , they might go ahead and pass SOPA / PIPA 2.0 . ride out tuned .
Wikipedia’s Efforts
The Wikimedia Foundationreportedthat more than 162 million citizenry saw their blackout message , and8 millionviewed their page about contacting Congress . In a " Thank You " page , Wikipedianswrote :
They also warned in aLearn More pagethat the banknote are not dead . They sharpen to a TED Talk by Clay Shirky on " why SOPA is a regretful idea " :
In ego - gratulatory news , I ’m weirdly proud that my article from last calendar week rapidly became the # 1 termination for the Google search"Why is Wikipedia Down ? "
Google’s Petition
On January 18 , Google demand visitor to sign on an anti - SOPA / PIPA petition , using the taglineEnd Piracy , Not Liberty . They receivedover 7 million signatures , out of 13 million visitor to the petition page .
Mozilla (Firefox)’s Message
Mozilla updated the nonpayment landing page in Firefox with a message about SOPA and security review . They subsequently reportedreaching 40 million people , of whom 1.8 million visited the SOPA information page . From there , 360,000 emails to Congress were generated .
The “Quote” Controversy Du Jour
So MPAA ( Motion Picture Association of America ) head Chris Doddmade some remarkson Fox News last calendar week . He said , in part , " Those who bet on quote Hollywood for reinforcement need to understand that this industry is watching very cautiously who ’s going to stand up up for them when their Book of Job is at stakes . … Do n’t ask me to publish a check for you when you think your job is at risk and then do n’t pay off any attention to me when my job is at stakes . " In a abbreviated nerd note , I find it deliciously amusing that this quote includes the countersign ' quote ' because Dodd never care to close his cite verbally , so we ca n’t just put citation marks around the word " Hollywood " when cite him . Ahem , go on . But you get the power point – this come out to be a terror from Dodd to give up providing those bounteous fat Hollywood military campaign contributions ( primarily to Democrats ) , if legislators do n’t pass off the legislating he want .
roar ! Pow ! Anotheronline petitionis suffer ! ( As I indite this , 18,000 people have signed a petition ask that Dodd be investigated for " bribery . " )
Some Other Stuff that You Might Want to Read
The adept origin I ’ve seen for news on SOPA , PIPA , and technology police in oecumenical isArs Technica . TheArsteam has been crank out terrific coverage daylight after day – it ’s worth a bookmark .
technical school fund Y Combinatorwants to " Kill Hollywood"by provide money to disruptive entertainment manufacture startup .
Tim O’Reilly ( of those famous computer rule book with fauna on the front)wrote a Google+ articlein which he question the core assertion that plagiarization is induce real economic harm . Singer Jonathan Coulton chimed inon his own web log , talk over the Megaupload closedown … which , I should prompt you , has little to do with SOPA , and might actually be good evidence that we do n’t need laws like SOPA to shut down online pirates , even oversea ones .
Andy Baio wroteWhy SOPA and PIPA Must die out , describing how his own creative career has been hampered by right of first publication legislating , and suggesting we do n’t want yet more of it .
Julian Sanchez posted a longish read onArs TechnicaentitledSOPA , cyberspace regulation , and the economics of piracy , running the numbers on how piracy run from an economical detail of sight . You should read it .
Stay tuned for further developing . If you have n’t learn my previous article on this topic , check outWhy is Wikipedia Down?andWhat ’s ill-timed With PROTECT IP and SOPA ?
