SOPA Protest Timeline and Statistics
The Day the Internet Stood Still
The largest protest in the history of mankind happened on the eighteenth day of January. In fact, tens of millions voluntarily protested about PIPA and SOPA in emails, blogs and tweets. This is mainly due to the reason that there are bills submitted by these media sites in threatening giants such as Wikipedia, Twitter, Facebook and Google of shutting down. In fact, the blackout even turned out to be the biggest protest throughout the history.
At the present, their serious efforts freezed out the censorship bills that reached the Congress. Truly, the protest seemed to be a life-saver of the web.
Burden Suffered By Websites
The Congress even won the rage of the web PIPA and SOPA are burdening or stressing websites with “full copyright responsibility”. This only means that when Wikipedia, for instance, is not able to control a content may likely come in contact with infringement charges. The site will be forced on a major shutdown.
A Joint Effort
On January eighteenth, Wednesday, the internet decided to take actions against SOPA. In fact, almost one-hundred fifteen thousand website users and thirteen million internet users participated in the protest. Even fifty-thousand websites blacked out to completely show what such a patrolled website looks like, if it is threatened by SOPA.
More so, even four of the top ten websites in the United States such as eBay, Craiglist, Wikipedia and Google decided to black out their entire pages and logos. Apart from it, there are various websites that initiate their protests against PIPA and SOPA. Among these websites are Mozilla, THE OATMEAL, IMGUR, DRUDGE REPORT, MOVEON, VIMEO, TECHDIRT, MINECRAFT, WORDPRESS, GREENPEACE, XDA DEVELOPERS and CHEEZBURGER NETWORK.
On the other hand, WIKIPEDIA even decided to black out its pages. It just provides a certain link to contact the senators. This is witnessed by almost one-hundred sixty million people that surpassed those who witnessed the Nixon and Kennedy in the presidential debate on television.
The Effects of Protesting
Apart from it, the website also received traffic thrice than the normal for the first ten hours of the internet protest. After the protest was made, the article of Wikipedia on SOPA was even viewed by people for almost four-hundred sixty-three thousand times.
For almost sixteen hours of the blackout, there are already two point four million SOPA-related tweets ever to hit Twitter. There are even two million tweets to ever occupy Twitter on the fifteen day of November. This is the exact day for the violent and infamous raid of the New York’s Police District of Zuccoti Park.
Mobile Commons and Tumblr contact tools enabled almost four-hundred thousand calls in the Congress. It is by far estimated to be nine-hundred nineteen calls for every congressional representative. If for every phone call it has an average length of forty-five seconds, then it would exactly mean of eleven point five hours of phone calls for every senator.
There are also petitions that are signed by almost ten million internet users. The petitions had hit five times over the petition on the demands Congressional repeal of Healthcare Reform of Obama with one point six million signatures.
Truly, the internet is such a platform through which they can successfully coordinate or organize millions of people to protest.