Millions upon millions of people witnessed the protests against the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) today as some of the Web’s most popular sites, including Google, reddit, Wikipedia, and Craigslist, staged protests against SOPA and its companion PROTECT IP Act (PIPA). The organizations that staged these protests are beginning to release hard numbers on the response, and they are pretty powerful.
The Wikimedia Foundation stated that it reached 162 million people with Wikipedia’s 24-hour English-language protest of the anti-piracy bills. Of those, more than 8 million readers in the United States then went and looked up contact information for their members of Congress, which could be done through the site. That being said, at least tens of thousands, if not more, of calls to congressional offices were more than likely made.
“The Wikipedia blackout is over and the public has spoken,” said Sue Gardner, Wikimedia Foundation Executive Director. “You shut down the Congressional switchboards, and you melted their servers. Your voice was loud and strong.”
Google did not go as far as blacking out its entire site as Wikipedia did, but it did have a black bar over their logo, as their Doodle, and encouraged users to sign the petition opposing SOPA, which went viral on Twitter, Google+ and Facebook very quickly. Google generated at least 13 million page views to its anti-SOPA page and got 7 million people to sign its petition.
The Progressive Change Campaign Committee, a liberal advocacy group, received 200,000 signatures on its petition. The organization stated that more than 30,000 Craigslist users called Congress through the PCCC’s website.
Not all was done on the internet. Opposers of SOPA and PIPA also staged in-person protests. Two of the largest protests were in New York City and San Francisco. All four of their senators are PIPA co-sponsors, despite them being the nation’s largest high-tech communities. Close to a thousand protestors were at the Manhattan offices of the New York senators. In San Francisco, speakers ranged from internet librarian Brewster Kahle to rapper MC Hammer. “When they say that it is to protect rights to content, that may be the surface, but as you drill down, you see all these other clauses that would put a tremendous burden upon service providers and a whole lot of other people,” Hammer said. He described SOPA as a “barbaric” bill that would “give the government the ability to shut down sites without due process.”
“This was one of the biggest outpourings of grassroots sentiment that I’ve ever experienced on Capitol Hill and it’s begun to tip the scales against SOPA and in favor of an open Internet,” Chris Fitzgerald, communications director for Rep. Jared Polis (D-CO), told Ars. “The phones rang off the hook once people became more aware of how SOPA will endanger jobs, free speech, and the Internet itself.” Polis is a longtime SOPA opponent.
At least 19 senators have declared their opposition to PIPA, including seven former co-sponsors. Senator Patty Murray of Washington expressed new reservations about the legislation.
Source: Ars Technica