The January 18 SOPA/PIPA blackout has seemingly already had a substantial impact. Five senators – Marco Rubio of Florida, Roy Blunt of Missouri, Orrin Hatch of Utah, Ben Cardin of Maryland, and John Cornyn of Texas – have announced that they are no longer backing PIPA, one of the controversial anti-piracy bills that has ignited the internet.
Cornyn pushed his colleagues to reconsider the language of the bill, noting on his Facebook page that it’s “better to get this done right rather than fast and wrong.”
PIPA, which is essentially the Senate version of SOPA, has found its support evaporating over the past week, with numerous Senators and House Representatives abandoning ship following the internet blackout. In addition, over the weekend the White House moved away from the legislation:
While we believe that online piracy by foreign Web sites is a serious problem that requires a serious legislative response, we will not support legislation that reduces freedom of expression, increases cybersecurity risk or undermines the dynamic, innovative global Internet.
The blackout, supported by such names as Google, Wired, Wikipedia, Reddit, and Mozilla, has pushed the internet into a frenzy, with multiple smaller sites joining in on the virtual protest.
Due to the overwhelming amount of support the blackout has had, it’s likely that more Senators and Representatives will step away from the bill in the coming days.
“multiple smaller sites”? lol Try thousands.
My webhost put an option in their control panel to black out your site for the day, and have it automatically removed, and they put in everything needed to make sure you didn’t have bad SEO from it. Thanks to them alone, I bet there are hundreds of sites that opted to black out for the day.
https://www.nearlyfreespeech.net/ is their site, and I like them more and more all the time.
The multiple of that multiple is twenty billion. Happy?
No, but really — your host sounds awesome.
Good stuff!! Keep up with the good fight!! All my friends and I have already sent emails to our local congressmen, and everyone should do the same!!
Roy Blunt is from Missouri. Not Mississippi.
Don’t mess with the internet. Brings a manly tear to my eye.