One year ago today, something incredible happened. With a
unified voice, the online community spoke out against legislation that would
have crippled the internet in the name of copyright protection.
January 18, 2012, marked the largest response to internet
legislation in history, proving that the voices millions of people are louder than the
millions of dollars spent. So many people contacted Congress on that single day,
in fact, that Congress’s servers went down. Within 48 hours, SOPA (in the
House) and PIPA (its Senate cousin) were both shelved. You won.
Congress that you have a voice.
Today, copyright reform is a real possibility and every member of
Congress knows that they need to have a good answer on the issues you care
about.
The collective action a year ago today marked an important
change in the debate here in DC. Up until then, Big Content had been able to sell
just about any change in law – no matter how collaterally destructive – in the
name of stopping copyright infringement.
So while today we celebrate the one-year anniversary of an
enormous achievement, we cannot stop there. In the past year, Public Knowledge
has been working tirelessly to promote a positive agenda to reform copyright so
that it encourages creativity, innovation, and speech. Although we remain
vigilant about the next SOPA or PIPA, thanks to you we are also pushing common
sense copyright reform in a way that simply has not been possible in the past.
Thank you for helping to change the debate in Washington
last year, and for helping change copyright for the better this year.
For more information, videos, and analysis on these bills, visit the SOPA/PIPA issue page.