SOPA and PIPA. If you haven't heard of them yet, you are probably not reading this. Yesterday, in an unprecedented internet protest, several popular sites went offline to make a point of their view of the bills. Wikipedia, Craigslist, and Reddit went black, just to name a few, and even the internet giant, Google put in it's two cents by posting a big black banner over their homepage with a link to a page expressing their opinions and redirecting you to sign a petition again the view.
According to Wikipedia, that over 162 million people saw its anti-censorship message yesterday well over the population of Estonia and Iceland...combined.. In sheer numerical terms that's over half the population of the U.S.. Google says that they collected over 7 million signatures on their petition. The Facebook Anti SOPA page collected over 78,000 likes. What does all this mean? That many people are riled up about this issue. Red Hat, a well know open source software solutions company sums up very well what the day was about:
"In a single generation, the Internet has transformed our world to such an extent that it is easy to forget its miraculous properties and take it for granted," Red Hat continues. "It's worth reminding ourselves, though, that our future economic growth depends on our ability to use the Internet to share new ideas and technology. Measures that block the freedom and openness of the Internet also hinder innovation."
But what does this mean? Earlier today, the federal government took down a popular file-sharing site, Megauploads. This is evidence that the government doesn't need these bills to successfully take down offending sites WITH due process. Regardless, the PIPA and SOPA bill leaders are pushing ahead with their bills, even with the much decreased support for the bill by both the Senate and the House. 18 Senators announcing they opposed the new PIPA bill, some of the representatives that no longer support the bill include :Lee Terry (R-Neb.), Ben Quayle (R-Arizona), Roy Blunt (R-Missouri), John Boozman (R-Arkansas), Kelly Ayotte (R-New Hampshire), Marco Rubio (R-Florida), Jeff Merkley (D-Oregon), Scott Brown (R-Mass.).
But what does this mean? Earlier today, the federal government took down a popular file-sharing site, Megauploads. This is evidence that the government doesn't need these bills to successfully take down offending sites WITH due process. Regardless, the PIPA and SOPA bill leaders are pushing ahead with their bills, even with the much decreased support for the bill by both the Senate and the House. 18 Senators announcing they opposed the new PIPA bill, some of the representatives that no longer support the bill include :Lee Terry (R-Neb.), Ben Quayle (R-Arizona), Roy Blunt (R-Missouri), John Boozman (R-Arkansas), Kelly Ayotte (R-New Hampshire), Marco Rubio (R-Florida), Jeff Merkley (D-Oregon), Scott Brown (R-Mass.). Although yesterday was a success, the movement needs to keep the momentum going and continue to pester the representatives. Even Anonymous got a good shot in when they took down the DoJ website in response to the take-down of Megauploads.
Some internet Statistics that you might find interesting, there are:
- 3.146 billion email accounts
- 40 years since the first email was sent
- 555 million websites as of December 2011
- 95.5 million .com domain names at the end of 2011
- 100 billion photos on Facebook
Sources:
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