SHUT DOWN THE INTERNET!

"Wikipedia, Reddit and about 10,000 other websites blacked out their pages Wednesday with messages warning of the dangers of the legislation and urging people to contact their congressional representatives."

 http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/technology/2012/01/sopa-blackout-sopa-and-pipa-lose-three-co-sponsors-in-congress.html

 As we mentioned in a previous article, the webs reaction to SOPA/PIPA was quite negative and became quite animated. On January 18, 2012 Wikipedia, Google, Firefox and others protested the bills by shutting down parts of their respective websites. This is the story of that day............

Earlier, Doug told us what SOPA/PIPA was, two bills in Congress aimed at stopping internet piracy. The tech world regarded the language of the legislation to broad and gave the DOJ (Department of Justice)  to far reaching a power to shut down sites and would lead to censorship of the free internet.

In protest and perhaps to illustrate what a censored web would look like, on January 18, 2012 over 10,000 websites across the world wide web conducted some kind of self-censorship. Some sites restricted access and directed the user to a link to contact their congressmen. Others went black and shut down with a fixed message screen.

The protest gained worldwide media attention and some sites actually saw record hits. I remember this day as I was doing some study for an auditing class and needed information on Sarbanes-Oxley. Imagine my surprise when I went to Wikipedia and got a black screen and a request for my zip code.

 Many other websites, although in agreement with the protest, decided not to inconvenience their users. Sites such as Facebook and twitter posted links to congress and displayed support for the blacked out internet, but went short of shutting down themselves

 As a result of the blackouts, 3 co-sponsors of the bill withdrew their support. The internet community hailed the protest as a resounding success and shortly thereafter SOPA/PIPA was shelved and slated for future revision.

Screenshots and numbers courtesy of  http://sopastrike.com/numbers/

Next time: OPEN Act and other Legislation