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Protests against SOPA and PIPA
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For the Wikipedia community proposal that led to the English Wikipedia blackout, see Wikipedia:SOPA initiative.
A series of coordinated protests against two pieces of proposed legislation in the United States Congress—the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the PROTECT IP Act (PIPA)—occurred on January 18, 2012. Some websites, including Reddit and the English Wikipedia, locked down their content entirely, redirecting users to a message of opposition against the proposed legislation. Websites of other organizations, such as Google, Mozilla and Flickr, featured protests against the acts, but kept some or all of their content available. In addition to the online protests, there were physical demonstrations in several U.S. cities, including New York City, San Francisco and Seattle. The protests were reported by news organizations around the world.
Supporters of the acts argued that legislation was needed to protect content producers such as musicians and filmmakers from copyright infringement (colloquially known as piracy) on websites based outside of the United States. Representative Lamar S. Smith, who introduced the SOPA bill, argued that "[t]he Stop Online Piracy Act helps stop the flow of revenue to rogue websites and ensures that the profits from American innovations go to American innovators."[1] Opponents argued that provisions in SOPA and PIPA could undermine online freedom of speech, and that there were insufficient safeguards in place to protect search engines and sites with user-generated content. Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales said that "if you want to combat piracy then measures that ask search engines to delist things or DNS services that block things are the wrong approach."[2]
On the weekend prior to the action, the White House stated that it would "not support legislation that reduces freedom of expression, increases cybersecurity risk, or undermines the dynamic, innovative global internet."[3] On the day of protests, some politicians that had previously supported the bills expressed concerns with the proposals in their existing form, while others withdrew their support entirely. Some media outlets were critical of the pressure placed upon supporters of the bills; the Boston Herald described the service withdrawals as evidence of "how very powerful these cyber-bullies can be."[4] The New York Times, however, characterized the omnibus protest as "A Political Coming of Age for the Tech Industry."[5]By January 20, the political environment regarding both bills had shifted significantly. The bills were removed from further voting, to be revised to take into consideration the issues raised by the technology companies.[6]
Contents[hide] |
[edit]Background
Main articles: PROTECT IP Act and Stop Online Piracy Act
The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the PROTECT IP Act (PIPA) are bills that were introduced into the United States House of Representatives and the United States Senate in the last quarter of 2011. The two bills, through different means, were designed to provide legal mechanisms for copyright holders, such as music and movie studios, to combat digital piracythat occurs on non-United States websites. Both bills are extensions of the earlier Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) that enabled content producers to issue "take down" notices to Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and websites to remove infringing content. While the DMCA has been considered effective for patrolling of websites within the United States, the DMCA fails to address infringement from foreign websites.[7] Part of the language of the bills when originally proposed would allow for copyright owners to issue complaints to ISPs and other major websites, like Google or Bing, requiring them to remove the hostnames of infringing sites from their Domain name registry (DNS) and to delist the link entries in search engines which link to those sites.
Many of the companies and organizations supporting the proposed legislation are content producers, such as the Motion Picture Association of America, the Recording Industry Association of America and the Entertainment Software Association, and identified the need to have such laws to combat revenue losses associated with the copyright infringement from these foreign websites. However, some lawmakers and many technology and Internet firms and associations have expressed concerns that two bills' languages are too broad, and the concept of domain name blocking and search engine removal would amount to censorship of the Internet without due process. A common criticism of the bill addresses broad and unclear language, such as what entails "deliberate actions to avoid confirming a high probability" for a website. Google's policy director, Bob Boorstin, stated that a site like YouTubesupporting user-generated content "would just go dark immediately" to comply with the legislation.[7] An alternative bill, the Online Protection and Enforcement of Digital Trade Act(OPEN), has been proposed by Representative Darrell Issa and Senator Ron Wyden, with support of technology companies; this bill places enforcement of copyright-infringing websites to the United States International Trade Commission instead of the Justice department, and would target the financial resources of these websites.[8]
In December 2011, SOPA was brought to the U.S. House Judiciary Committee to begin the process of marking up the bill prior to introduction to the House floor.[9] During this time, numerous websites began displaying banners and messages promoting their readerships to contact Congress to stop the progress of the bill, stating that their sites would be "blacked out" should the bill pass as a law. The markup session, in which several proposed amendments to address the concerns of technology companies were defeated, was eventually put on hold prior to the end of the year, to be restarted once Congress came back in session. Several technology websites began proposing the idea of an "Internet blackout" on the same day to protest SOPA and PIPA to occur before SOPA would be voted on on the House floor as a means of further protest.[10] Reddit was the first major site to announce an "Internet blackout" on January 18, 2012, and several other sites shortly followed, coordinating actions on that day.[11] Though Senator Patrick Leahy, the main sponsor for SOPA, had stated that they would remove the controversial DNS provisions prior to the blackout date, sites continued to plan the demonstration.[12]
[edit]Protests of January 18, 2012
[edit]Wikimedia community
On December 10, 2011, Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales drew attention to concerns over SOPA, which he described as a "much worse law" than the notorious DDL intercettazioni (Wiretapping Bill)[13] in Italy some months earlier, which was being fast-tracked through Congress under a "misleading title". He stated he was attending high level meetings on this, and wanted to gauge the sense of the English Wikipedia community on the issue, and specifically on the question of a blackout similar to that held successfully in October 2011 by Italian Wikipedia editors over the proposed media censorship law in that country:[14]
- I thought this would be a good time to take a quick reading of the community feeling on this issue ..... To be clear, this is NOT a vote on whether or not to have a strike. This is merely a straw poll to indicate overall interest. If this poll is firmly "opposed" then I'll know that now. But even if this poll is firmly in "support" we'd obviously go through a much longer process to get some kind of consensus around parameters, triggers, and timing.
Following initial informal discussions which resulted in a positive response, a formal consultation titled "SOPA Initiative" was opened by the community to consider specific proposals and preferred options. These included matters such as location (United States only or worldwide), and whether content should be disabled completely or still accessible after a click-through page. Eventually, the discussion led to a decision strongly in favor of a 24 hour global blackout of the site on January 18, disabling normal reading and editing functions, affirmed in a vote of approximately 1,800 editors.[15] The blocking action was purposely not complete; users could access Wikipedia content from the mobile interface or mirror sites, or if they disabled Javascript or other web browser functions.[16][17][18][19]
The vote formally affected English Wikipedia only; other language editions and Wikimedia projects were left free to decide whether to hold their own protests given the potential worldwide impact of the legislation, with technical support on offer from the Foundation.[15] The editor communities of at least 30 other sister projects chose to do so.[20]
On January 17, 2012, Jimmy Wales affirmed the results of the community's decision and that the Wikimedia Foundation, which hosts the English Wikipedia website, would support the community's decision. He called for a "public uprising" against the proposed legislation, which critics fear would threaten free speech. He added that factors such as funding or donations had not been part of the community's considerations, but the matter had arisen as a "a principled stand" from the community, and that in his view "our best long-term prospect for Wikipedia in terms of our survival ... depends on us being principled".[21] He commented on editors' reasons for the decision:[21]
- Free speech includes the right to not speak. We are a community of volunteers. We have written this thing that we believe to be a gift to the world. We don't charge people for it. It's freely available to anybody who wants to (use it). We are a charity. And I think it's important for people to realize that the ability of our community to come together and give this kind of gift to the world depends on a certain legal infrastructure that makes it possible for people to share knowledge freely -- that the First Amendment is incredibly important in terms of the creation of this kind of thing.
Wikimedia Executive Director Sue Gardner posted an announcement of the Foundation's support for the blackout proposal on Wikimedia's blog. The post received over 7000 responses from the general public within the first 24 hours of its posting.[22] On January 16, Wikimedia founder Jimmy Wales and Wikimedia Foundation Executive Director Sue Gardner announced the blackout after conducting a 72-hour poll of the editing community. The blackout ran for 24 hours starting at 05:00 UTC (midnightEastern Standard Time) on January 18.[23]
Despite the support of those polled for the action, a small number of Wikipedia editors blacked out their own user profile pages or resigned their administrative positions in protest of the blackout; one editor stated his "main concern is that it puts the organization in the role of advocacy, and that's a slippery slope".[24]
[edit]Other websites
More than 115,000 websites participated in the protest.[25] Websites that participated in the blackout included Craigslist, Boing Boing, A Softer World, Cake Wrecks, Destructoid, DeckTech.net, Free Press, Failblog, Newgrounds, Good.is, Good Old Games, Mojang, MoveOn.org, Mozilla, Rate Your Music, Oh No They Didn't, Tucows, What Dat.net, Tumblr, TwitPic, VGMusic,Wikia, Wordpress, xkcd, Galobuzz as well as the corporate site of the Linux distribution openSUSE and the congressional websites of Silicon Valley representatives Anna Eshoo and Zoe Lofgren.[26][27] Google announced their intention to join the blackout by altering their logo for US visitors for the day, almost entirely obscuring it with an interactive black redaction swath. Clicking through the specially designed logo took readers to an informational page about the bills, and the opportunity to sign a petition to be sent to Congress stating their concerns.[28]
The Mozilla Foundation altered the default start page of their Firefox web browser, blacking it out and providing links with more information on the SOPA/PIPA bills and the opposition to them, and to allow users to email their Congressional representatives.[29]
Wired magazine's online site used Javascript to place black bars on most of the text on their page, as if the text was redacted, outside of their key article regarding SOPA/PIPA; readers could remove the bars with a mouse click.[30][31]
The photo-sharing website Flickr created the ability for a registered user to "censor" an unlimited number (up from an initial limit of ten) of photos as demonstration of how SOPA/PIPA regulation would affect the site; the user-selected photographs were greyed out, and included informational text.[32]
4chan ran a banner and "censored" posts by users on all image boards[33], which could be viewed by hovering over them.
A video was circulated by the League for Gamers (founded by Mark Kern and supported by ScrewAttack, Extra Credits, and LoadingReadyRun) protesting the Entertainment Software Association's support of SOPA by gathering support to boycott the ESA's popular E3 convention.[34]
[edit]Physical demonstrations
In addition to the online blackouts, protests in cities such as New York City, San Francisco, and Seattle were held on January 18 to raise awareness of the two bills.[35][36]
[edit]Reaction
[edit]World reaction
[edit]Pre-protest
The announcement of the blackout was reported worldwide. Media that covered the story included ABC Australia,[37] CBC,[38] BBC,[39] der Spiegel,[40] Le Figaro,[41] Le Monde,[42] Libération,[43] Fox News,[44] The Guardian,[45] Menafn,[46] News Limited,[47] Sky News,[48] The Age,[49] The Hindu,[50] The New York Times,[51][52] Taipei Times,[53] The Washington Post,[54] The Wall Street Journal[55] and The Times of India.[56]
Several media organizations including The Washington Post, The Guardian, and NPR encouraged a "crowdsourcing solution for those left searching for answers" during the Wikipedia blackout by inviting users to ask questions on Twitter using the hashtag #altwiki.[57]
An executive of the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) dubbed the blackout plan an example of the "gimmicks and distortion" that inflamed passions while failing to solve the problem of copyright infringement by "draw[ing] people away from trying to resolve what is a real problem, which is that foreigners continue to steal the hard work of Americans".[58]Former U.S. Senator and MPAA Director Chris Dodd stated that the coordinated shutdown was "also an abuse of power given the freedoms these companies enjoy in the marketplace today."[59]
Dick Costolo, CEO of social networking site Twitter, rejected calls for Twitter to join the protest, tweeting that "[c]losing a global business in reaction to single-issue national politics is foolish."[60] Originally, some thought Costolo referred to all of the blackout movements on January 18th, but afterwards clarified that he was referring to a hypothetical blackout of Twitter, and that he was supportive of the Wikipedia blackout itself.[61]
The sponsor of the bill, Representative Lamar S. Smith, called the blackout a "publicity stunt," stating "it is ironic a website dedicated to providing information is spreading misinformation about the Stop Online Piracy Act."[62]
On January 17, 2012, in response to growing concerns over PIPA and SOPA, the White House stated that it "will not support legislation that reduces freedom of expression, increases cybersecurity risk, or undermines the dynamic, innovative global internet."[3]
[edit]January 18
The Wikimedia Foundation reported that there were over 162 million visits to the blacked-out version of Wikipedia during the 24-hour period, with at least 8 million uses of the site's front page to look up contact information for their U.S. Congressional representatives.[63][64] The usage of Wikipedia's front page increased enormously during the blackout with 17,535,733 page views recorded, compared with 4,873,388 on the previous day.[65] A petition created and linked to by Google recorded over 4.5 million signatures,[64] while the Electronic Frontier Foundation reported that more than 1 million email messages were sent to congressmen through their site during the blackout.[66] MSNBC reported that over 2.4 million Twittermessages about SOPA, PIPA, and the blackouts were made during a 16-hour period on January 18; this included Facebook founder Mark Zuckerburg, who had not used the service since 2009, to encourage his followers to contact their congressmen.[67][68] Many internet users took to Twitter to vent their frustration and anger over the blackout.[69] Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR), a key opponent of the bills, said that "lawmakers had collected more than 14 million names - more than 10 million of them voters" to protest the legislation.[6]
Creative America, one of the groups in favor of the SOPA and PIPA bills, used the blackout to prompt those affected by it to enjoy other forms of entertainment in place of their normal Internet activities; such ads appeared at Times Square in New York City and on various websites.[36]
CTV news in Canada published a "survival guide" for "getting around the blackout" on their national website, citing Wikipedia as the answer to "burning questions such as "Are chinchillas rodents?" and "What does ‘rickrolling' mean?" The guide provided detailed instructions on how to circumvent the ban and access the English Wikipedia during the protest.[70]CTV referred to the protest as "a date that will live in ignorance."[71]
During the blackout, libraries at several universities used the outage to remind students that the traditional paper encyclopedias were available for research. Students who grew up turning to the internet to look up information were encouraged to visit the library as an alternative source of information.[72]. On Twitter, a joke hashtag #factswithoutWikipedia trended with users posting humorous fake "facts."[73]
[edit]Post-protest
The impact of the coordinated action was generally considered significant. Yochai Benkler of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society stated that the January 18 blackout was "a very strong public demonstration to suggest that what historically was seen as a technical system of rules that only influences the content industry has become something more," further adding "You've got millions of citizens who care enough to act. That's not trivial."[74] California House member Darrell Issa called the collective effort an unprecedented means for upsetting a backroom lobbying effort.[75] One Silicon Valley lobbyist said the content industry had "a lot to learn," noting that they don't have grassroots support: "There are no Facebook pages to call your congressman to support PIPA and SOPA."[76] The New York Times, which framed the netizens' revolt in terms of the new economy versus the old economy,[77]headlined the activism as a "political coming of age for the tech industry."[5]
Newspaper editorials had mixed views. The Boston Herald called the protest a "hissy fit" by "Internet powerhouses" saying, "within hours of the online protest, political supporters of the bill... began dropping like flies, thus proving how very powerful these cyber-bullies can be."[4] The New York Times described the protest as "Noted, but as a Brief Inconvenience"[78] and, as well, offered an Opinion about the protest and possible accomplishments.[79] BBC News technology writer Rory Cellan-Jones was of the opinion that the blackout achieved its objectives but possibly at some cost to Wikipedia's reputation.[80] The shutdown also prompted a response from cartoonist Matt (Matthew Pritchett) in the British Daily Telegraph.[81]
MPAA Chairman Dodd admitted that the content industry had lost the public relations battle with the internet industry. saying "[y]ou've got an opponent who has the capacity to reach millions of people with a click of a mouse and there's no fact-checker. They can say whatever they want."[82] Dodd called for Hollywood and Silicon Valley to work out a compromise on the legislation.[83]
[edit]Impact and aftermath
During the day of January 18, six senators who had been sponsors of the bills, including Marco Rubio, PIPA's co-sponsor, Orrin Hatch, Kelly Ayotte, Roy Blunt, John Boozman, andMark Kirk, stated that they would withdraw their support for the bills.[84] Several other congressmen issued statements critical of the current versions of both bills.[85][86]
By the following day, eighteen of the 100 senators, including eleven of the original sponsors of the PIPA bill, had announced that they no longer supported PIPA.[87] An initial floor vote was scheduled for January 24 prior to the Internet blackout, but following these responses, Senator Majority Leader Harry Reid announced that the vote will be postponed, urging the bill's main sponsor, Senator Patrick Leahy, to work out compromise in the bill "to forge a balance between protecting Americans' intellectual property, and maintaining openness and innovation on the Internet".[6][88] Similarly, the House Judiciary Subcommittee chairman, Representative Lamar Smith, announced that further voting on SOPA would be placed on hold "until there is wider agreement on a solution".[89][90] Later, an updated New York Times news story reported that the two bills were "indefinitely shelved."[6]
[edit]International responses
World Wide Web inventor Sir Tim Berners-Lee "scathingly" [91] attacked the SOPA and PIPA legislation. Speaking at an industry event in Florida he praised the protests by major sites for the attention they had drawn, and described the bills as a "grave threat to the openness of the internet" that "had to be stopped":[91]
- "The laws have been put together to allow an industry body to ask the government to turn off a web site and the government can make people turn off the site without trial ... There are times when that could be very powerful and damaging, like before an election and it is crossing a line and we have to protect the internet as an open space, we have to respect it."[91]
Two days later, Vice-President of the European Commission and European Commissioner for the Digital Agenda Neelie Kroes described the bills as "bad legislation" that would "threaten the basic foundation of the success of the web".[92]
[edit]See also
- 2011 Italian Wikipedia blackout, also undertaken to oppose a proposed law.
- New Zealand Internet blackout
- Internet activism
- List of organizations with official stances on the Stop Online Piracy Act
[edit]References
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- ^ Petipone, Julianne (January 20, 2012). "SOPA and PIPA postponed indefinitely after protests". CNN. Retrieved January 20, 2012.
- ^ a b c Worth, Dan (2012-01-18). "Web inventor Tim Berners-Lee slams SOPA and PIPA legislation". V3. Retrieved 2012-01-20.
- ^ Worth, Dan (http://www.v3.co.uk/v3-uk/news/2140390/european-commission-digital-chief-backs-anti-sopa-protests). "European Commission digital chief backs anti-SOPA protests".V3. Retrieved http://www.v3.co.uk/v3-uk/news/2140390/european-commission-digital-chief-backs-anti-sopa-protests.
[edit]Bibliography
- Musil, Steven (January 16, 2012). "Wikipedia to join Web blackout protesting SOPA". CBS News. Retrieved January 16, 2012.
- Rainey, James (January 16, 2012). "Wikipedia blackout to protest SOPA progress in Congress". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved January 16, 2012.
[edit]External links
 | Wikinews has related news:Wikipedia, Reddit in 'blackout' against SOPA, PROTECT IP laws |
- Wikimedia Foundation's official statement and Wikimedia CEO's statement.
- SOPA Strike - Listing of all participating websites for the Internet blackout
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H.R.3166 -- Enemy Expatriation Act (Introduced in House - IH)
HR 3166 IH
1st Session
H. R. 3166
Mr. DENT (for himself and Mr. ALTMIRE) introduced the following bill; which was referred to the Committee on the Judiciary
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled,
SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.
This Act may be cited as the `Enemy Expatriation Act'.
SEC. 2. LOSS OF NATIONALITY.
(a) In General- Section 349 of the Immigration and Nationality Act (8 U.S.C. 1481) is amended--
(1) in subsection (a)--
(A) in each of paragraphs (1) through (6), by striking `or' at the end;
(B) in paragraph (7), by striking the period at the end and inserting `; or'; and
(C) by adding at the end the following:
`(8) engaging in, or purposefully and materially supporting, hostilities against the United States.'; and
(2) by adding at the end the following:
`(c) For purposes of this section, the term `hostilities' means any conflict subject to the laws of war.'.
(b) Technical Amendment- Section 351(a) of the Immigration and Nationality Act (8 U.S.C. 1483(a)) is amended by striking `(6) and (7)' and inserting `(6), (7), and (8)'.