So SOPA and PIPA Are Dead – For Now
From Fight for the Future:
Fight for the Future, which ran the largest organizing sites for the recent SOPA protests (sopastrike.com and americancensorship.org), applauds the announcement that the Senate and House have postponed action on the proposed web censorship bills.
“We sent the MPAA back to the drawing board,” said Fight for the Future Co-founder Holmes Wilson, “But any law that lets the copyright lobby block our websites, censor our search results, or cut off our Paypal accounts–without even going through a judge–will be soundly defeated.”
“This was the largest online protest in history,” said Fight for the Future Co-founder Tiffiniy Cheng, “The MPAA was trying to quietly force this bill through Congress, but when internet users started paying attention, real democracy happened. This is a watershed moment in the fight against lobbyists’ influence on politics.”
“The MPAA could have proposed a law to address copyright infringement,” said Holmes Wilson, “Instead, they proposed giving rightsholders veto power over online innovation and free expression. At that point, it was just a matter of getting the public involved.”
A timeline of the SOPA protests: http://sopastrike.com/timeline
Statistics from the January 18 protest: http://sopastrike.com/numbers
Statistics from the November 16 protest: http://americancensorship.org/infographic2.html
I don't think they've won anything at this point. The US Gov't is trying to convict an apparently semi-legit site for pirating. If they win then they'll have precedent for everyone worse than Megaupload and if they don't they win rhetoric for why they should pass SOPA/PIPA. For now the legislation sits on the backburner and waits for a result and the public to become complacent on it.