Roundup of Articles on SOPA and PIPA Blackout

 

The Benton Foundation's Kevin Taglang offers a terrific roundup of developments regarding SOPA and PIPA, along with responses from the White House, worldwide protests, unprecedented online activism and shifting support for the bills.

 

SOPA and PIPA are prime examples of big companies trying to do everything they can to stop new competitors from innovating. They're also examples of how lobbying in the United States has become one of the most effective ways of limiting this sort of competition.

 

In an unprecedented display of Internet force, thousands of websites went dark or censored themselves Wednesday to protest twin antipiracy measures pending in Congress.

 

The blackout represented a culmination of months of intensifying outcry over the bills, echoed and amplified by social media, blogs and tech publications, that drew more and more popular sites into the official day of protest, including Google, Wikipedia, Craigslist, Wired, Reddit, Boing Boing, Reporters Without Borders, Pressthink, Greenpeace and McSweeney's.

 

During the ascent of the Internet, Silicon Valley geeks tapped away at keyboards in northern California while Washington policy wonks debated welfare and taxes. But their absence from the political arena had consequences and, in the battle over proposed antipiracy legislation, the techies are playing catch-up to their politically entrenched opponents in the entertainment industry.

 

When the powerful world of old media mobilized to win passage of an online antipiracy bill, it marshaled the reliable giants of K Street. Yet on Wednesday this formidable old guard was forced to make way for the new as Web powerhouses backed by Internet activists rallied opposition to the legislation through Internet blackouts and cascading criticism, sending an unmistakable message to lawmakers grappling with new media issues: Don’t mess with the Internet.