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January 19, 2012 11:13 PM UTC

The SOPA/PIPA Blackout: This Mattered

  • 21 Comments
  • by: Colorado Pols

Our friends at the Washington Post report:

An online protest led by Google Inc. and Facebook Inc. against U.S. anti-piracy bills illustrates how Internet companies are changing legislative debate in Washington.

Nine co-sponsors, five in the Senate and four House members, began withdrawing their support for Hollywood-backed measures to combat piracy. Internet companies devoted home pages yesterday to opposing the bills, threatening a traditional lobbying effort led by the Motion Picture Association of America that assembled bipartisan support for the legislation…

“It’s unprecedented,” Jonathan Zittrain, a Harvard University professor of law and computer science who serves on the boards of bill opponents Electronic Frontier Foundation and Internet Society, said in an interview. “You could see some members of Congress saying there’s no percentage in it for me to stick out my neck on something like this.”

In Colorado, Sen. Michael Bennet, a former co-sponsor of the Senate version of the bill called the PROTECT IP Act, backed away yesterday citing “valid concerns” raised locally–FOX 31:

Bennet, a Democrat, was one of 40 co-sponsors for the “Protect Intellectual Property Act”, which is being pushed by Hollywood’s music and film industries in an effort to crack down on internet piracy and copyright infringement.

But, on Wednesday, as protests swirled through cyberspace, Bennet told FOX 31 he’s going to push Congress to take a more balanced approach…

“This is an important jobs issue,” Bennet said. “Recently, several Coloradans have raised valid concerns about potential unintended consequences that could result from the bill as it is currently written and that could compromise our economic growth.”

Several Republican legislators, including Rep. Scott Tipton, Doug Lamborn, and Mike Coffman also announced opposition to SOPA yesterday, positions that we believe were not public knowledge prior to yesterday’s protest (assuming they had taken positions at all). Rep. Jared Polis has led the opposition to these bills in a truly national sense, and deserves credit now that his opinion is growing in come-lately popularity among his fellow representatives.

Within what we do consider to be a very effective use of our platform yesterday to add our voice to a much larger expression of dissent, we feel obligated to correct one piece of inaccurate reporting about our involvement–or at least place it in its proper context. The Grand Junction Sentinel’s Charles Ashby reported today on local websites involved in the SOPA blackout:

Most notable among political followers in the state was the decision by ColoradoPols.com to link to a national website, sopastrike.com/strike, instead of posting its usual fare.

Although ColoradoPols.com does post original content, it’s primarily known as an aggregate site, one that routinely links to copyrighted news articles produced by newspapers around the state. Last year, the Denver Post threatened legal action against the website as a result.

Folks, this isn’t an accurate characterization of the actions taken by the Denver Post against this blog in 2010 (not last year, there’s the first correction), or our motivation for joining in the SOPA blackout. To briefly recap for those not aware, in May of 2010, a group of Colorado newspapers led by the Denver Post demanded that this blog stop quoting any material from their publications–a demand in excess of their legal rights, and impinging on our own legitimate fair use rights. We have nevertheless complied with this demand in the interest of avoiding costly litigation. Note that the Grand Junction Sentinel didn’t participate in these threats, and we appreciate being able to cite non-paywalled content from them.

Because no media outlet has a monopoly on information, we haven’t suffered from this misguided decision, although we regret being unable to properly acknowledge and promote excellent journalism still produced at the Post and elsewhere. But while there are convergent themes in the Post’s unlawful demands on us and the battle in Congress over SOPA/PIPA, their legal bullying is not the reason we chose to get involved with yesterday’s protest action.

We participated because SOPA/PIPA represent a much greater threat to online forums like this one than any newspaper, even those like the Denver Post who engaged in such unscrupulous “protection” of their copyrights as the ill-fated Righthaven. It’s one thing to demand we do something with legal enforceabililty–quite another to be blocked by legally immunized ISPs and search engines. Combine that with the loss of “safe harbor” provisions giving websites a fair opportunity to remove offending content, and we’re talking about a mortal threat.

But with SOPA/PIPA in disarray, and this blog more popular than ever after a year and a half of impasse with misguided, declining local newspapers, maybe these are fights we’re winning.

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21 thoughts on “The SOPA/PIPA Blackout: This Mattered”

  1. It obviously mattered to the media.  It was a big, widely covered story. Widely covered both in all news media and in entertainment media by comics and hosts of widely watched shows.  ColPols may not be Wikipedia but still should be proud to have been part of it, especially in raising awareness right here in Colorado and adding to the pressure on Bennet.

  4. I mean that, you were part of something big and apparently successful.

    The only critique I have for you is this: why are you not giving Republicans adequate credit for turning the tide against SOPA? Even Markos Moulitsas is giving credit where it’s due! Please excuse Markos’ strong language, but he’s very upset:

    http://www.dailykos.com/story/…

    Democrats listed all remain adamant that they’ll remain co-sponsors of the legislation but work to “fix it”.

    Bullshit.

    It’s been a while since we’ve seen Democrats this tone deaf, this oblivious to political reality.

    You have an entire wired generation focused on this issue like a laser, fighting like hell to protect their online freedoms, and it’s FUCKING REPUBLICANS who are playing the heroes by dropping support?

    Those goddam Democrats would rather keep collecting their Hollywood checks, than heed the will of millions of Americans who have lent their online voice in an unprecedented manner.

    Are they really this stupid? Can they really be this idiotic?

    Strong words, but I think you needed to hear them.

    1. You have a valid point, and Kos is right.

      Let’s call bullshit on Bennet’s “backing away.”  He is playing politics with this issue: issuing a statement about concerns, but not really changing his position at all.

      Personally, I think he’s made the decision to hang with the money from the RIAA/MPAA/Chamber, and hopes that the fervor will die down, and we’ll quit watching, placated by his “concern.” As far as I’m concerned, he’s still a Co-Sponsor until he withdraws from the bill.

      Senator, grow a pair and stand by your decision. Franken has the balls to publicly support the bad law, and while I disagree with him, I respect him.  You, who knows which side you’re on.

      1. Talked Cantor into sitting on the House bill.

        Killing SOPA/PIPA, if they indeed get killed, will have been a bipartisan effort.

        Issa (R-CA) and Wyden (D-OR) are carrying the alternative, OPEN, in their respective houses.

    3. Both Issa and a couple of other Repubs who worked their asses off slowing this down and then yesterday when they took the lead on abandoning this destructive bill.

      And yep, a lot of Democrats put sucking at the money teat ahead of doing what makes sense. But the Republicans will do the same when it comes to bills for their funders.

  5. I enjoyed the morning news regarding going black.

    Here the local news starts around 4:30am. Due to things I was almost awake so I turned on the computer (technical contribution later) to watch the cable feed. The station I was watching was Ch.9 WUSA (note the station call sign) a CBS affiliate, just like KUSA.

    The going black was a top story. I suppose losing Wiki hurt the news gathering effort. Along with it was going to have the 60% of the population who use the computer asking where things went. The 2 or 3 minute segment was pure pro legislation. The next time it ran, this was live, the reporter corrected some of the not quite correct information and added more of the pro legislation statements from those in the industry. She also ended the segment with “CBS is a supporter of SOPA/PIPA”.

    The next segment was similar except with more pro stuff. This was around 5:40am. The next segment, close to 6am, included some of the opposition statements, but not a full statement.

    The after 6am segments included a live interview with someone on the anti-legislation side and she gave the full truth the the crappy legislation. The following interviews were even more anti than that one.

    This is important here because the congress people and staff do listen to these news casts.

    This station tends to be a reader of the Republican bullet points, but they do toss out the real garbage. Ch7, ABC, is a full reader without editing or rebuttal of the Republican bullet points. Ch 4, is less of a reader of bullet points, however, they do air some of the light crap.

    Okay, tech talk. All cable lines have the local stations on them not scrambled. This includes the HD stations. I use either an outdoor antenna, damned great over the air stuff, or a separate line from the cable line to a TV card in my computers. I like the Hauppauge TV tuners and the Windows remote control. I then use Windows Media Center (Entertainment Center) software to watch TV. The Windows CME is included in your modern Windows OS software. Try it, you might like it. That is why I said I turn on my computer.

    I get Al Jazerra, along with France, British, Japanese, Korean, Chinese and other OTA (over the air stations) too. Really cool. I like Al Jazerra to learn what is happening outside of censored US news reports. It is nothing like the propaganda spread by Bush.

    1. Interesting stuff.

      Regarding KUSA, they used to be the ABC affiliate here, but are now the NBC, not CBS affiliate. (All the Big 3 stations shuffled their affiliations in the mid 90s, causing permanent confusion for anyone who grew up or lived here for a long time up to that point.) But, KUSA is owned by Gannett, who also owns WUSA, so there is a connection. (The station ID used to be KBTV, but they changed it during the height of the Reagan era. USA! USA! USA!) I’d bet WUSA made a similar change around the same time.

  6. Bullshit. The drafters intended what they put into the bill. The unintended consequence was the pushback they got. It is not good enough for Bennet to support a slightly less objectionable version.

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