Web Stands on SOPA Box for Internet Blackout

If you had never heard of it before, chances are you heard of SOPA in one way or another when you logged into the internet last week. On Wednesday January 18 the internet went black to protest the Stop Online Piracy Act that many fear would open the door to government censorship of online communication.


Across the board sites like Google, Wikipedia, Wordpress, Craigslist and many more pulled their homepages and directed users to information about the SOPA and PIPA (Protect IP ACT) legislation currently being debated in Congress. Even though Facebook didn’t directly participate in the strike, walls everywhere were filled with opinions on the subject. While most urged people to participate, one friend of mine offered an interesting perspective on the topic.


“I don't need internet giants (i.e. big corporation, how ironic) telling me to protest. If we were a people of integrity maybe piracy wouldn't be an issue. Government shouldn't be regulating that any more than Google should tell me when to protest. They are just as guilty of censorship as big brother. Remember what search results came up when you typed in "Christian" versus "Muslim". They have no business complaining about censorship. It's a bandwagon for them to jump on for free name-dropping. –Joe”


Whether it’s a bandwagon or a soap box the backlash from the internet strike is evident. Take a look at some of the statistics: 10,000,000 signatures were collected petitioning against the proposal.


Over 3,000,000 emails were sent to congress members, so many that it temporarily crashed their servers. 115,000+ sites participated by removing content or adding sensor bars.


83,914 people changed their profile pictures in speaking out against SOPA and PIPA.


At the beginning of the day 6 senators were against PIPA; by 8pm 34 publicly denounced it.


At the end of the day the sites that shut down drew more traffic than before. So maybe my friend Joe is right and the protest was part propaganda but it worked so well because people across the country spoke up for something they feel strongly about.


So what do you think about the proposed SOPA and PIPA regulations?


By Heather Fairchild - Heather is a multimedia developer with experience in web, film, photography and animation as well as traditional fine arts like painting and sculpting. In addition to writing for Nexxt, she is co-founder of a design and promotion company. Heather’s spare time consists of making puppets, teaching Sunday School, building Legos and doing science experiments with her children.