On January 18th, 2012 many sites on the internet went “black” to protest the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Protect Intellectual Property Act (PIPA), including Wikipedia, Boing Boing, Reddit, Cheezburger, Craig’s List, WordPress, Wired, and Sociological Images too, to name a few (in solidarity, Google blacked out it’s logo). While written ostensibly to make it easier to stop pirating of music, movies, and other media, opponents argue that the Acts are so penalizing and over-reaching that they would essentially criminalize sharing and creativity. There’s a great slideshow of the blacked out sites at the Los Angeles Times.
The next day proved that this online action made a large difference, at least in the short run. Seventy Congress members switched their positions or newly decided to stand against the Acts (Boing Boing). Congress has postponed actions on the Act, which was slotted for today.
From the point of view of Sociological Images, this is a much needed victory. From a sociological point of view, it is another illustration of how the internet creates both new legal issues and facilitates new social movement tactics.
Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.
Comments 5
Hjbeebower — January 23, 2012
It's really not fair to bring up how great it is Congress is holding off on passing SOPA and PIPA and not even mention Megaupload.
User — January 23, 2012
It's worth mentioning that all these sites urged users to write their congress representative and even, such as in wikipedia's case, provided tools to help users more easily contact them. While needless to say, most people probably ignored these, no doubt many did take up contacting specific reps about the subject. Several sites also provided links to inform users on the issue as well.
landen — January 24, 2012
Why is no one even mentioning ACTA?? It's like SOPA on steroids!