Internet Strike. What’s the Score?
January 20, 2012
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The 18th of January will be remembered as the day the internet went on strike to protest against SOPA and PIPA. But did it have any tangible effect?
Oh hell yes.
75.000 sites joined the strike. Either by going black like Reddit, Wikipedia and Minecraft or in a tailor made way. 4Chan was live but black-barred all content. Ars Technica decided to stay live because, being information resource, that’s what they wanted to contribute: information but only on SOPA. Wired elegantly censured the front page. Fark did a white-out claiming to be tired of hosting the site and SOPA would be a good reason to quit. And it is rumored over at Reddit that even Zombo.com went black.
7 million people signed a petition hosted by Google. A link on the famously empty search page beneath a blacked out Doodle led visitors to the TakeAction page.
8 million people contacted their elected representatives either by phone or email expressing their concern about the bill. That’s 2.5% of the entire population of the United States appealing to their representatives to keep the net free and open. In one day.
10 senators and nearly twice that many House members announced their opposition against the bill, reports the New York Times. Amongst whom Senator Marco Rubio (R-FLA) who withdrew his co-sponsorship for PIPA while in the House Representatives former co-sponsers Lee Terry (R-Neb.) and Ben Quayle (R-Ariz.) backed out of SOPA. Prorepublica.org keeps track of the number of House members supporting and opposing SOPA. Currently the score is 95 oppose, 26 support, which leaves 313 members undecided or unknown. For PIPA in the Senate the score is 22 oppose 37 support. Leaving 41 undecided or unknown. This fight is far from over.
2 AFK protests took place. In New York some 2000 people rallied outside the offices of U.S. Senators Schumer and Gilliband. In San Francisco protesters gathered at the Civic Center Plaza outside of the mayor’s office.
And finally hundreds if not thousands of traditional news media reported on the strike and SOPA and PIPA. Which was about time after the deafening silence from that corner prior to the strike about this terrible piece of legislation.
Oh hell yes.
75.000 sites joined the strike. Either by going black like Reddit, Wikipedia and Minecraft or in a tailor made way. 4Chan was live but black-barred all content. Ars Technica decided to stay live because, being information resource, that’s what they wanted to contribute: information but only on SOPA. Wired elegantly censured the front page. Fark did a white-out claiming to be tired of hosting the site and SOPA would be a good reason to quit. And it is rumored over at Reddit that even Zombo.com went black.
7 million people signed a petition hosted by Google. A link on the famously empty search page beneath a blacked out Doodle led visitors to the TakeAction page.
8 million people contacted their elected representatives either by phone or email expressing their concern about the bill. That’s 2.5% of the entire population of the United States appealing to their representatives to keep the net free and open. In one day.
10 senators and nearly twice that many House members announced their opposition against the bill, reports the New York Times. Amongst whom Senator Marco Rubio (R-FLA) who withdrew his co-sponsorship for PIPA while in the House Representatives former co-sponsers Lee Terry (R-Neb.) and Ben Quayle (R-Ariz.) backed out of SOPA. Prorepublica.org keeps track of the number of House members supporting and opposing SOPA. Currently the score is 95 oppose, 26 support, which leaves 313 members undecided or unknown. For PIPA in the Senate the score is 22 oppose 37 support. Leaving 41 undecided or unknown. This fight is far from over.
2 AFK protests took place. In New York some 2000 people rallied outside the offices of U.S. Senators Schumer and Gilliband. In San Francisco protesters gathered at the Civic Center Plaza outside of the mayor’s office.
And finally hundreds if not thousands of traditional news media reported on the strike and SOPA and PIPA. Which was about time after the deafening silence from that corner prior to the strike about this terrible piece of legislation.
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