We Have Won! S.O.P.A Is Over (For Now)

[Mac Green]

  Here is an email I received :   Hi everyone!

A big hurrah to you!!!!! We’ve won for now -- SOPA and PIPA were dropped by Congress today -- the votes we’ve been scrambling to mobilize against have been cancelled.

The largest online protest in history has fundamentally changed the game.  You were heard.

On January 18th, 13 million of us took the time to tell Congress to protect free speech rights on the internet. Hundreds of millions, maybe a billion, people all around the world saw what we did on Wednesday.  See the amazing numbers here and tell everyone what you did.

This was unprecedented. Your activism may have changed the way people fight for the public interest and basic rights forever.


The MPAA (the lobby for big movie studios which created these terrible bills) was shocked and seemingly humbled.  “‘This was a whole new different game all of a sudden,’ MPAA Chairman and former Senator Chris Dodd told the New York Times. ‘[PIPA and SOPA were] considered by many to be a slam dunk.’”

“'This is altogether a new effect,' Mr. Dodd said, comparing the online movement to the Arab Spring. He could not remember seeing 'an effort that was moving with this degree of support change this dramatically' in the last four decades, he added."  

Tweet with us, shout on the internet with us, let's celebrate: Round of applause to the 13 million people who stood up  - #PIPA and #SOPA are tabled 4 now. #13millionapplause

 
 
We're indebted to everyone who helped in the beginning of this movement -- you, and all the sites that went out on a limb to protest in November -- Boing Boing and Mozilla Foundation (and thank you Tumblr, 4chan)! And the grassroots groups -- Public Knowledge, Electronic Frontier Foundation, Demand Progress, CDT, and many more.

#SOPA and #PIPA will likely return in some form.  But when they do, we'll be ready.  Can you make a donation to Fight for the Future, to help us keep this fire going?



We changed the game this fall, and we're not gonna stop.  $8, $20, every little bit helps.

13 million strong,

Tiffiniy, Holmes, Joshua, Phil, CJ, Donny, Douglas, Nicholas, Dean, David S. and Moore... Fight for the Future!


P.S.  China's internet censorship system reminds us why the fight for democratic principles is so important:

In the New Yorker:  "Fittingly, perhaps, the discussion has unfolded on Weibo, the Twitter-like micro-blogging site that has a team of censors on staff to trim posts with sensitive political content. That is the arrangement that opponents of the bill have suggested would be required of American sites if they are compelled to police their users’ content for copyright violations. On Weibo, joking about SOPA’s similarities to Chinese censorship was sensitive enough that some posts on the subject were almost certainly deleted (though it can be hard to know).
...
After Chinese Web users got over the strangeness of hearing Americans debate the merits of screening the Web for objectionable content, they marvelled at the American response. Commentator Liu Qingyan wrote:

‘We should learn something from the way these American Internet companies protested against SOPA and PIPA. A free and democratic society depends on every one of us caring about politics and fighting for our rights. We will not achieve it by avoiding talk about politics.’"

[ark_ader]

They always have a plan B.

[Thenasty]

Then if Plan B fails, Plance C.

[hypernova]

And we shall always shove those plans right back up their ass.

[newmanfamilyvlogs]

SOPA might be over, but this is just the first skirmish in the kind of battle that will be persistent until they win, or the entirety of government is replaced by people who get it. Which ever comes first.

[Gray_Area]

Been an age, but it comes to mind, I need to look up Bruce Sterling, and see what he's saying....

(Bruce Sterling’s novels include: Intuition Ocean (1977), The Artifical Kid (1980), Heavy Weather (1994), Holy Fire (1996), Distraction (1998), Zeitgeist (2000), The Zenith Angle (2004), Kiosk (2007), and most recently The Caryatids (2009). His essay collection and non-fiction books include: The Hacker Crackdown: Law and Order on the Electronic Frontier (1993), Tomorrow Now: Envisioning the Next Fifty Years (2002), and Shaping Things (2005).)

[Mac Green]

They always have a plan B. Yah thats whats scary

[Mac Green]

They always have a plan B.

Yah thats whats scary

[Nephasth]

Must be getting crowded over in PnR for this ---steaming pile of meadow muffin--- to be spilling into the main forum...

[Le Chuck]

Must be getting crowded over in PnR for this ---steaming pile of meadow muffin--- to be spilling into the main forum...

I wouldn't know, I haven't requested access.  Heard it was a ghost town now that all the freeloaders have been kicked.

[Mac Green]

I cant even get in to PnR

[Le Chuck]

Send Saint a PM summarizing the forum rules, Be nice, Don't trick the auto censor, No rom getting talk, No flaming, etc and tell him briefly why the hell you want to go to PnR anyway.  (Hint, all the cool stuff is out here)

[Mac Green]

Send Saint a PM summarizing the forum rules, Be nice, Don't trick the auto censor, No rom getting talk, No flaming, etc and tell him briefly why the hell you want to go to PnR anyway.  (Hint, all the cool stuff is out here)

True Very True

[SavannahLion]

Yeah, the fight isn't over and the studios will try a different tack. That's the danger. People age, people change, the studios refuse. Here's what I think will happen using a parallel.

Yonkers ago (I'm not sure of exact dates here) helmet laws were non-existent in California. Helmets were entirely optional for all age groups. A bill was introduced to the Legislature in the 60's(?) that required helmets for all riders in state. A similar protest rose and overwhelmed the Legislature, the bill was shelved.

Fast forward about five or ten years later and a new helmet bill was introduced. This one simply required helmets for all riders below 18. Law makers were playing a gambit and strummed the heart strings of parents everywhere. Not just motorcyclists. Motorcyclists protested yet again, but the cry of child safety and the desire of parents to wrap their kids in bubble wrap won out and the bill was passed into law.

Fast forward another ten or fifteen years. And guess what? The original bill was re-introduced and the law passed without so much as a blip on the radar.

What happened? The children, who were forced to wear helmets for years, are now voting adults. Since they are used to wearing helmets and now comprised the majority of motorcyclists on the road, this group of adults felt no reason to dispute such a law. The majority of older riders have either retired, died, or simply stopped caring. Coupled with the vast majority of voting non-motorcyclists who are also going to vote this into law, the bill was a shoe-in.

Informally, the term (at least where I've seen this) is called shoehorning. If a bill fails the first go around, then vector of attack is to introduce a much more lax (eg palatable) bill, wait the years out then gradually introduce the more draconian versions of the bill until you achieve your goal. For this to succeed, the bill writer (or someone who is like-minded) needs to stay in politics for years.

My gut tells me this is exactly what the studios are going to do, if they haven't already started. Not only do they have vast amounts of money on their side, they have vast amounts of time.

While writing this, I just realized what the vector might be that allows the studios to shoehorn their draconian laws even further into our lives. Tie "piracy" with identify theft. I forget the term that ties unrelated "bills" together like that but that's how a lot of pork belly laws get passed.

[ark_ader]

No they will just go to another avenue to distribute their wares.  Movies are not all the good lately, and I have been seeing more regular film actors taking part in TV shows, turning them into cinema quality productions.  It is a steady income, the advertising pays for the medium, and we have companies like Netflix and LoveFilm dishing out the content on demand.

DVDs will go out of fashion, so will Blue Ray and finally like Laserdisc be a collectors item.  I would not be surprised that old DVDs will rot away and digital content will be on flash drives.

Smaller, safer and can be locked.

Unfortunately Cinemas will disappear and only Imax will be available.

Direct to Memory Stick or Direct to SKY/Cable/Netflix/Lovefilm will be the norm, as we are getting bigger and better cinema quality equipment at home.  Heck I can get 70" out of my projector with 5.1 surround sound for less than $500.  Add up players, discs, traveling back and forth to the rental shop, missing out on popular rentals.  Yuck.  Roll on home cinema, only then will we get to vote on the latest blockbuster and tell Mr Spielberg that Shia Labeouf better not be in the next Transformers or Indy movie. 

That will be perfect, and then we can stop all this crap and get back to Battlefield 4.