An outside-in online campaign wrecked the Motion Picture Association of America’s campaign’s attempt to toughen intellectual property law.
BuzzFeed.com
1/19/2012
We were emailing with a Senate staffer yesterday about the remarkable collapse of the Stop Online Piracy Act, with a Senate stampede away from the legislation that started with a Facebook post from Florida Republican Marco Rubio.
The staffer wrote:
How does [Motion Picture Association of America chief] Chris Dodd justify keeping his over-paid job after today? For that matter, how does any trade association president continue to justify their salary? Speaking with inside perspective, today represented big shift from power of lobbyists to power of media, social networks, and great PR.
Related: Wait – PIPA isn’t Kate Middleton’s sister? (video)
Unfortunately this PIPA is not Kate Middleton’s sister, rather it’s just another tedious action being taken by Congress. Many major websites like Wikipedia, reddit, Mozilla, and others are going dark today in an effort to raise awareness of SOPA and PIPA, two bills that aim to increase regulation of the internet. This may be the one time in history Glenn actually agrees with Marxist news outlet, Free Press. The internet is one of the only things in our society that works, and by far the freest market on Earth …so, of course the government is going to do what they can to wreck it through regulations. Glenn [Beck]’s take? “When in doubt, leave it out.”
Update: Legislators run for the exits on SOPA/PIPA after protests. In darkness, there is apparently much sunlight…
…Rand Paul, who had already opposed PIPA (the Senate version of the bill), pledged to filibuster the bill in order to defeat it. He’ll get his chance next Tuesday, because Harry Reid still hasn’t given up on the entertainment industry’s big wish-list item. He has a cloture vote scheduled at that time, and a defeat will mean the end of both bills, probably for the rest of this session…
Update 2: Althouse: Lefty bloggers irked that SOPA activism is moving Republicans and not Democrats in Congress.
…The Tea Party, Dayen says, has “struck fear” into the Republican Party, but the Democrats don’t respond to their grassroots because “the progressive movement inspires laughter.”…
Wait! Didn’t Harry Reid say the ‘Tea Party Is Dying Out’ and that Republicans Need to Ditch “Tea Party Extremism” ? Heh…
