On Wednesday, Jan. 18, any student searching through Wikipedia for a homework reference would have instead found a blank black page and the words: “Imagine a world without free knowledge.”
Wikipedia, along with hundreds of other websites, shut down in protest against the U.S. Stop Online Piracy Act and the Protection of Intellectual Property Act. Other high-traffic sites that participated in the protest included Reddit and WordPress. Facebook and Twitter declined to participate, but Google blacked out its homepage logo, urging internet users to sign petitions in solidarity with the protests for the 24-hour window that is now being dubbed “Internet Blackout Day.”
“It was everywhere, on so many levels,” said Portland State senior Spanish major Timothy Hornickel of Internet Blackout Day. “It seemed really effective.”
Public apprehension of the two federal bills ranged from complaints about the restriction of creative online expression to fears that broad government powers to shut down websites would lead to large-scale violation of first amendment rights. The laws would also have given greater power to film, music and publication industries in lawsuits against sites sharing copyrighted material.
“The biggest problem I had with SOPA, when I was first reading about it, is it would stop a lot of content from being shared on websites,” Hornickel said. “There’s a lot of garbage on the internet but there’s a lot of people out there who are trying to do some great things.”
“One of the most important legitimate problems with SOPA/PIPA is the fact that they address a very real problem with a solution that leaves open the potential for serious overreach,” said Portland State professor of political science Christopher Shortell.“The definition of infringing content is left quite vague, which is likely to result in a chilling effect.”
The SOPA and PIPA bills seemed to be on track to a quick passage through the legislature. However, in the wake of protests, several key proponents of the bills—including Republican senators Marco Rubio and Roy Blunt, who co-sponsored SOPA and PIPA respectively—have since denounced the bills in their current forms. Texas Republican Lamar S. Smith, who originally introduced SOPA to the legislature, withdrew the proposed version for further drafting.
Both SOPA and PIPA have been postponed indefinitely.
“Many of the sponsors have backed off support because there isn’t enough of a political upside to passing the bill now,” Shortell said. “If this is going to be an issue that your opponent can effectively use against you in your reelection campaign, then you don’t want be associated with it.”
Millions of online petitions to Congress, signed on Jan. 17 and in the days following, helped to discourage much of the former support and gave leverage to opponents of both bills. Oregon Senator Ron Wyden has been a vocal opponent of the bills for some time, and even placed a hold on PIPA last year as it came out of the Senate Judiciary Committee.
In a guest column for Wired magazine, Wyden likened the protests to the way customers can review a business online. “Smart businesses recognize that even the bad reviews are an opportunity to understand their audience…and those that have gone the extra mile to understand the internet have found success,” he wrote. “But up until last week, Washington hadn’t learned these lessons.” Wyden went on to praise the reaction in Congress as “an example of the way Washington can change for the better.”
Other congressional opponents of SOPA, such as Washington’s Maria Cantwell, urged their constituents to participate in petitions. Cantwell’s webpage and Facebook showcased a petition in support of the Open Act, a reaction to SOPA/PIPA, which in general terms would amend existing trade and copyright laws to keep the internet open for exchange of information.
In a statement on her website, Cantwell said, “Grassroots opposition to SOPA and PIPA is louder than ever, and we can show Congress that there’s an alternative.”
Although many grassroots petitions to representatives and senators were signed, and the blogosphere buzzed furiously around the issue, the real clout came from companies like Google, which have a serious self-interest in keeping the online exchange of information unfettered. Google alone gathered over 4.5 million petition signatures against SOPA/PIPA.
“It is tough to see a company like Google being ‘grassroots,’” said Shortell, whose research often focuses on the interactions between law and society. “This is a situation where different interest groups are countering the proposed legislation. They are doing so quite publicly because they believe that the public will support their position rather than position of the content-providers.”
Time will tell, but it seems that the public won’t let their representatives crack down on content-sharing without a fight.