SOPA and Protect IP Act Derailed

I am quite certain this week will go down as a milestone for the Internet.  For several weeks opposition against the Stop Online Privacy Act and the Senate version Protect IP Act started snowballing and culminated into a day of protest by some of the Internet’s biggest companies, such as Wikipedia, Google, and Reddit to name a few. The protest called for a day of online blackouts.  Wikipedia shut down access to its website, and Google added a blackout banner over its iconic Google search engine.  The participating websites also included links to identify and contact their respective members of Congress. Wikipedia alone reaches 27 million people, and estimates are that 300 million people do Google searches everyday.  That is a lot of eyeballs on one issue.

There are no current estimates, but I am sure that the Hill received an unprecedented deluge of e-mails, letters and phone calls as a result of the blackout protest.  I think legislators have rapidly learned that there is no other industry or platform that has the ability to rally so many people so rapidly over a single issue.  The Washington Post reported that Internet companies were able to outmaneuver some of the most entrenched and highly experienced lobbyists on the Hill. On Friday, January 20th, majority leader Reid announced that the Senate would delay vote on the Protect IP Act until further notice.

For the record, CompTIA opposed SOPA because we too believe that the measure would seriously jeopardize innovation and entrepreneurship on the Internet. To learn more, visit http://www.techvoice.org/Libraries/Documents/SOPA_Letter-Judiciary-1-10-12.sflb.ashx.