It sparked one of the biggest internet protests ever, and US lawmakers are trying to resurrect it from the grave.
In the early 2010’s, one of the biggest tech stories of the time revolved around SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act). The proposed legislation, at the time, was a horrible bill where all anyone had to do was accuse a website of “piracy”. That, in turn, would require Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and others to wipe that website off the face of the internet. As a result, it would create an American internet that would require the outright approval of the censorship happy copyright lobby as they would have unprecedented power to dictate who lives and who dies on the internet. In short, if they don’t like you in any way shape or form, kiss your internet career goodbye because due process would become a thing of the past.
The legislation was shocking and disturbing and it defied all logic as to why the heck lawmakers would create such a terrible piece of legislation. For reasons that should be obvious, almost everyone was upset at the legislation. As a result, it sparked massive backlash as websites (including the website I worked for at the time, ZeroPaid) to participate in what is now considered one of the most iconic internet protests in history: the blackout protests. Websites all over, big and small, blacked out their website to protest the unprecedented attempt to massively censor the internet. Even websites that prided themselves on staying out of political debates like Wikipedia participated in this protest because everyone knew that their very future was at stake.
Ultimately, the backlash proved too much as the legislation ultimately died off much to the relief of the internet at large. Undeterred, the copyright lobby, such as the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) quickly got to work to bring back the legislation that would grant them unprecedented power over speech on the internet. In 2013, the lobby organization pushed to bring back SOPA which would have been known as SOPA 2.0. Those efforts, mercifully, went nowhere.
Then, last year, reports came out that the MPAA was, once again, pushing to bring back SOPA. As a result, it became clear that the MPAA has been pushing for an internet censorship button for more than a decade now. Ultimately, the hope was that lawmakers would have no appetite given what previously happened and just ignore those calls.
Unfortunately, there are signs that some of those calls were heeded. According to the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), a draft version of the next SOPA is currently floating around the halls of Congress:
The Foreign Anti-Digital Piracy Act (FADPA), along with at least one other bill still in draft form, would revive this reckless strategy. These new proposals would let rights holders get federal court orders forcing ISPs and DNS providers to block entire websites based on accusations of infringing copyright. Lawmakers claim they’re targeting “pirate” sites—but what they’re really doing is building an internet kill switch.
These bills are an unequivocal and serious threat to a free and open internet. EFF and our supporters are going to fight back against them.
In the process of pushing for an internet kill switch, the bill would also do what it can to eliminate due process and implement a sort of “guilt upon accusation” system where the ability to fight back against these accusations are limited:
The First Amendment should not take a back seat because giant media companies want the ability to shut down websites faster. But these bills wrongly treat broad takedowns as a routine legal process. Most cases would be decided in ex parte proceedings, with no one there to defend the site being blocked. This is more than a shortcut–it skips due process entirely.
Users affected by a block often have no idea what happened. A blocked site may just look broken, like a glitch or an outage. Law-abiding publishers and users lose access, and diagnosing the problem is difficult. Site-blocking techniques are the bluntest of instruments, and they almost always punish innocent bystanders.
The copyright industries pushing these bills know that site-blocking is not a narrowly tailored fix for a piracy epidemic. The entertainment industry is booming right now, blowing past its pre-COVID projections. Site-blocking legislation is an attempt to build a new American censorship system by letting private actors get dangerous infrastructure-level control over internet access.
To put it simply, there was a very good reason why people protested such laws in the past. If lawmakers push this legislation again, it’s entirely possible there will be those that will revive the pushback against such a bill. Let’s hope it never gets past draft form, but given the recent efforts to end free speech on the internet through an unfortunately bi-partisan effort to kill Section 230, it’s safe to say that this legislation could very easily move forward as well.
Considering how partisan US culture has become, I cannot trust US internet to mount an effective push-back anymore. Also expect “influencer” astro-terfing by entertainment industries.
I think it’s still entirely possible that people will protest in huge numbers. Not a guarantee and you might be right, but I still think people turning out to protest is possible still. This is because people are already quite upset with where things are going with the Trump administration. Examples of this include DOGE cuts and the trade war with Canada – the latter of which wasn’t even brought up during the US election at all as fat as I can tell. The difference might be that lawmakers won’t care what people have to say and pass it anyway. This in a bid to stay loyal to Trump as they’ll probably label anyone who is opposed to it as a “leftist conspiracy”.
Anyway, it’ll be interesting to see how this plays out in this kind of political environment since there are a LOT of moving gears right now. Like so many others out there, even though I stay tuned as much as possible to things going on, it’s practically impossible to keep up with it all.