Significant coverage and messaging occurred from the planned blackouts and protests of the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and Protect IP Act (PIPA) of the Internet on January 18. According to the site Fight for the Future, roughly 75,000 websites took part in the protest.
In particular, Wikipedia says 162 million people viewed the blackout landing page. More substantively, 8 million U.S. visitors looked up Congressional representatives and 12,000 people posted comments on Wikimedia Foundation’s blog post announcing the blackout.
Google confirmed that 4.5 million people signed the company’s petition to protest SOPA and PIPA, while 350,000 emails were sent to representatives using SopaStrike.com and AmericanCensorship.org. While Twitter did not actively participate in the protest, over 2.4 million SOPA-related tweets between 12 AM and 4 PM on January 18, with the top five terms being SOPA, Stop SOPA, PIPA, Tell Congress and #factswithoutwikipedia.
The White House reported that a combined 103,785 signed a petition to permanently table the legislation. All of this pressure has had some effect, as roughly 24 U.S. Senators have now come out against the bills, including former co-sponsors Ben Cardin, Marco Rubio and Roy Blunt.
In November Google, Facebook, eBay and other major tech players took out a full page add in the New York Times to state their opposition to the bills. Link-sharing community Reddit organized a boycott of GoDaddy.com when it was revealed that the site supported SOPA and was instrumental in getting the Internet blackout protest started.
Source: CBSnews.com
