Public Outcry and Wikipedia Stopped Legislation!

Wikipedia's Blackout

I agree with San Francisco Chronicle’s James Temple that the SOPA/PIPA Blackout on January 18 marked the Web’s political coming of age. The fact that Wikipedia consulted with its community of supporters and blacked out its site in protest of the proposed Internet censorship legislation was what turned the tide. As soon as it became apparent to senators and congresspeople that Wikipedia was going to shut down in protest and that other major web sites would join in the protest, they realized that the tide of public opinion was against the entertainment-industry-sponsored legislation. Both proposed bills were seriously flawed, since they originally planned to block the URLs of web sites that were accused of copyright infringements without due recourse. The bills’ sponsors began to address critics’ concerns by changing the implementation of the anti-piracy provisions, but the Wikipedia community and other Internet champions felt that they needed to take a very public stand. It worked! The current legislation is now dead.