Writing for Cato At Liberty, Ars Technica alum Julian Sanchez has a timely redux of the research he did on how the made-up piracy numbers quoted during debates about SOPA and PIPA come from, and how little relation they bear to reality. — Read the rest

Amy Seidenwurm says: "Pro Publica posted a simple/powerful image of the members of Congress' position on SOPA/PIPA today vs. yesterday."

SOPA Opera Update: Opposition Surges

Joey Sellers sez, "I know you've been covering PIPA-SOPA and wanted to share a large flowcart I just completed on the subject. It brings together a slew of material to get folks new to the subject up to speed and fill in the blanks for those who have been following it." — Read the rest

Writing in Mother Jones, Siddhartha Mahanta and Nick Baumann describe the unprecedented legislative difficulty that the entertainment lobby faces today in Congress. The MPAA was able to win a legislative battle with Wall Street's over "movie futures," but they're losing the fight to pass SOPA and PIPA, and they're losing to people, not lobbyists. — Read the rest

Clay Shirky gives a great talk in the TED offices about the biggest danger of PIPA/SOPA.

What does a bill like PIPA/SOPA mean to our shareable world? At the TED offices, Clay Shirky delivers a proper manifesto — a call to defend our freedom to create, discuss, link and share, rather than passively consume.

Wikipedia's Jimmy Wales engages with the Copyright Alliance's Sandra Aistars, who says she's the voice of 11 million artists in the US whose ability to make a living urgently require the country to abolish due process, hand over the DNS to a cabal of media robber barons, and criminalize innocent websites by making it impossible for them to comply with the law. — Read the rest

William Gibson weighs in on SOPA/PIPA: "I think that SOPA as it stands now, or as it stood before they paused to think about it, is extremely ill thought out, and a basically crazily Draconian piece of legislation."

Writing in the Guardian, Dan Gillmor argues that SOPA and PIPA aren't foolishly extreme because their proponents don't understand the net; rather, they are extreme because their proponents understand that the net breaks the monopoly of the powerful over communications and organizing. — Read the rest

The globally praised Khan Academy comes out against SOPA and PIPA in this explainer video, which does a really excellent job of digging into the implications for legitimate sites (like Khan Academy) in a world where SOPA/PIPA become law. This is a great explanation of what SOPA and PIPA means for people trying to communicate with a broader public, but one thing to keep in mind as you watch is that there's another constituency that's missing: all the people who are using the net for other reasons: people who want to post videos of human rights abuses, who want to talk with other sufferers from a rare disease, who want to privately share private family moments with distant relatives. — Read the rest

House Judiciary Committee Chair Lamar Smith (R-TX) has vowed to resume his markup hearings in February. (Thanks, Adam!)

Yesterday, literally millions of Americans contacted their senators and congressional reps to ask them to withdraw their support for SOPA and PIPA. The result? A massive withdrawal of support from elected lawmakers for the bills. Senators Marco Rubio (R-FL), Roy Blunt (R-MO), Mark Kirk (R-IL), Orrin Hatch (R-UT) and John Boozman (R-AR) all vowed to oppose PIPA (all were co-sponsors of the bill). — Read the rest

Michael Geist sez,

While there is little that people living outside the U.S. can do to influence SOPA and PIPA, there are many reasons why it is important for everyone to participate in tomorrow's SOPA protest.

First, the SOPA provisions are designed to have an extra-territorial effect in countries around the world.

Jonathan from Hackers and Founders sez, "We're planning SOPA/PIPA protests in SF, NYC, DC and Seattle on Wednesday the 18th to coincide with the blackouts."

Former Senator Chris Dodd, Chairman and CEO of the Motion Picture Association of America, Inc. (MPAA), pooh-poohs the January 18 internet blackout protests over SOPA and PIPA:

It is an irresponsible response and a disservice to people who rely on them for information and use
their services.

In The Guardian, Domninic Rushe quotes Twitter CEO Dick Costolo's dim view of a "blackout" SOPA protest from Wikipedia, Reddit, and others* at Twitter.

That's just silly. Closing a global business in reaction to single-issue national politics is foolish.

Jimmy Wales has announced that Wikipedia will join Reddit, Boing Boing, and many other sites around the Internet in going dark on Wednesday to protest SOPA/PIPA, the pending US legislation that would make it impossible to run any website that links or allows commenters to link, by making us liable for copyright infringement on the sites we link to. — Read the rest

Andrew sez,

The New York Tech Meetup, a 20,000 member community of people working in the New York Tech Industry are protesting the pending legislation in the US Senate called Protect Intellectual Property Act (PIPA) and its companion legislation in the House of Representatives, called Stop Online Piracy Act, (SOPA).

In an interview with GigaOm's Coleen Taylor, publisher Tim O'Reilly explains what's so wrong about SOPA:

I talked with Nancy Pelosi about SOPA the other day, and she said that the experience with piracy is different for people in the movie industry.

Updated: Commenters have pointed out that I've jumped the gun here. SOPA is shelved, but not killed. It could be put back into play at any time.

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor has killed SOPA, stopping all action on it. He didn't say why he killed it, but the overwhelming, widespread unpopularity of the bill and the threat of a presidential veto probably had something to do with it. — Read the rest

Zachary sez, "I needed someplace to vent my frustration with SOPA
between calls to my Congress members. I created a homepage design
option for people who want to take their sites dark on January 18.
It's public domain and on github so people can fork it." — Read the rest