The Day the Internet Stood Still

THE DAY THE INTERNET STOOD STILL THE LARGEST PROTEST IN HISTORY On Wednesday, Jan. 18th, TENS OF MILLIONS protested SOPA & PIPA in tweets, emails and blogs. Made possible by the very media sites these bills threaten to shut down – giants like Facebook, Twitter, Wikipedia, and even Google – THE SOPA BLACKOUT TURNED OUT THE LARGEST PROTEST IN HISTORY. For now, their efforts have stalled two of the most terrifying censorship bills ever to hit Congress. CONSIDER THE PROTEST THAT SAVED THE WEB AS WE STILL KNOW IT: HOW DID CONGRESS WIN THE WRATH OF THE WEB? Overshooting their aim to stop piracy, SOPA and PIPA burden sites with FULL COPYRIGHT RESPONSIBILITY This means sites like Wikipedia that can't police user content could face infringement charges and be SHUT DOWN WEDNESDAY JAN 18TH THE INTERNET STOOD UP TO SOPA 115,000 WEBSITES and 50,000 SITES OVER 13 MILLION BLACKED OUT COMPLETELY INTERNET USERS to signal just what a SOPA patrolled web looks like participated in Wednesday's protest 4 OF THE TOP 10 US WEBSITES (Google, Wikipedia, Craigslist & eBay) BLACKED OUT LOGOS AND ENTIRE PAGES Caaple WwiInrr-A croicalict AMONG THE 115,000 PROTESTING SITES: 10. REDDIT MOZILLA TWITPIC THE OATMEAL TECHDIRT FLICKR IMGUR WIRED ----- RG VIMEO MOVEON DRUDGE REPORT MINECRAFT WORDPRESS CHEEZBURGER NETWORK XDA DEVELOPERS GREENPEACE WIKIPEDIA blacked out all of its pages and provided a link to contact Senators 160 MILLION PEOPLE saw Wikipedia's Blackout That's over 2X THE 70 MILLION AMERICANS that tuned in to see Nixon & Kennedy in the first-ever televised presidential debate The website received 3X MORE TRAFFIC than normal during the first 10 hours of the protest The day after the protest, Wikipedia's SOPA article was viewed 463,000 TIMES JANUARY 18 JANUARY 2.4X MORE VIEWS than SOPA received through all of January Within 16 hours of the blackout, SOPA OWS 2.4 MILLION SOPA-RELATED TWEETS HIT TWITTER That's more than the 2 MILLION OCCUPY TWEETS on Nov. 15th, the day of the N.Y.P.D.'s #WIKIPEDIABLACKOUT infamous and violent raid Zuccotti Park constituted 1% of all tweets that day SOCIAL MEDIA'S SIEGE OF CONGRESS Tumblr and Mobile Commons contact tools together enabled over 400,000 CALLS TO If each phone call had an CONGRESS average length of 45 seconds, that would mean 11.5 HOURS OF PHONE That's 919 CALLS per CALLS PER SENATOR Congressional Representative Petitions were signed by PROTEST SOPA 10 MILLION INTERNET USERS PROTEST HEALTHCARE REFORM OVER 5X the 1.6 million signatures on the petition demanding Congressional repeal of Obama's Healthcare Reform 3 MILLION EMAILS were sent on SOPA Blackout Day With so much traffic, most contact links on the U.S. Senate's home page were broken, citing "technical difficulties" THURSDAY JAN 19TH FALLOUT FROM BLACKOUT: POLITICIANS BACK AWAY The day after the protest, 14 SENATORS ISSUED STATEMENTS AGAINST THE BILL SEN. ORRIN HATCH SEN. JOHN BOOZMAN SEN. MARCO RUBIO (R-Utah) (former co-sponsor) (R-Arkansas) (former co-sponsor) (R-Florida) (former co-sponsor) SEN. JIM RISCH SEN. KELLY AYOTTE SEN. JIM INHOFE SEN. JEFF MERKLEY (R-Idaho) (R-New Hampshire) (R-Oklahoma) [D-Oregon) SEN. JIM DEMINT SEN. DAVID VITTER SEN. PAT ROBERTS SEN. MARK BEGICH (R-South Carolina) [R-Louisiana) (R-Kansas) (R-Alaska) SEN. JACK REED SEN. BERNIE SANDERS SEN. PATTY MURRAY (D-Rhode Island) [D-Vermont) (D-Washington) 3 days after the blackout, SOPA sponsor Rep. Lamar Smith TABLED THE BILL This also came after Twitter followers found THE SOPA SPONSOR'S CAMPAIGN SITE VIOLATED SOPA THE UNCREDITED LANDSCAPE PHOTO behind his headshot was lifted from artist D.J. Schulte's Flickr Sen. Harry Reid also announced the POSTPONEMENT OF SOPA'S HATED SISTER BILL, PIPA EVEN ON ICE, SOPA RAISES CONCERNS ABOUT CENSORSHIP & FREEDOM OF SPEECH GOOGLE FOUNDER SERGEY BRIN: "While I support [.] reducing copyright infringement (which I don't believe these acts would accomplish), I am shocked that our lawmakers would contemplate such measures that would put us on a par with the MOST OPPRESSIVE NATIONS IN THE WORLD." PICTURE A SOPA-ZAPPED INTERNET Sites accused of copyright infringement would be subject to GOVERNMENT-EXECUTED MEASURES %24 www. J.COM SEARCH Shut down of Denial of site in Block of site site revenue search results All of this could happen BEFORE A COURT TRIAL Time to file a counter-notice to prevent Maximum penalty for streaming this from happening after accusation: 5 DAYS unauthorized content: 5 YEARS IN PRISON REALISTICALLY, WHEN WILL CONTENT REGULATORS CATCH SOPA AN EXPANDING WEB? Consider the years it took modern medias to reach AUDIENCES OF 50 MILLION Radio: 38 years Television: 13 years The Internet: 4 YEARS It's reassuring that the Internet is the only platform from which anyone has or could ever successfully orchestrate millions of people. THE NATION'S LARGEST NEWS PROVIDERS DON'T EVEN WIELD THIS POWER - 5 of the 6 major U.S. media companies: NBC, CBS, NewsCorp, Time Warner and Viacom openly support SOPA. Consider that the powerful sites behind the SOPA blackout stood not only for their own survival, but also for the rights of their customers: for current and future Internet users to generate, access and share information and media as they choose. 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