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How the web flexed its muscle with piracy protests

How the web flexed its muscle with piracy protests

By Jenna Worthan, New York Times | Updated: 5 June 2012 01:16 IST

Highlights

The Web buzzed with protests large and small on Wednesday, and some opponents of Congressional legislation took their opposition offline, too.

The Web buzzed with protests large and small on Wednesday as the tech industry rallied against Congressional legislation to curb Internet piracy.

Some sites blacked out -- among them, the English-language Wikipedia, though it was possible to access the encyclopedia through several clever workarounds -- while others, including Google and Craigslist, draped their pages with information about the bills, or restricted access.

Many start-ups quickly cobbled together tech solutions to support their cause. HelloFax, for example, created a tool that let people send their representatives faxes voicing their opinions through the Web.

The effort was an unusual orchestration that began gathering steam online late Tuesday night and escalated early Wednesday morning, eventually whipping the Web into a frenzy.

Google said 4.5 million people signed its online petition to Congress, voicing displeasure at the legislation; Twitter said more than two million posts on the subject flowed through the site by early afternoon, nearly four times as many as usual.

Engine Advocacy, a service that helps people call their local members of Congress, said on Twitter that it was averaging roughly 2,000 calls per second, while Wikimedia Foundation, the nonprofit organization that oversees Wikipedia, said four million people used its blacked-out site to look up contact information for their local representative.

Opponents of the legislation also took their demonstrations into the real world in New York, San Francisco and Seattle, but drew relatively modest numbers of protesters. Still, for a group that tends to be more comfortable showing solidarity from behind the warm glow of a computer screen -- by changing a profile picture or reposting a favorite motto -- it was a considerable showing.

The New York rally, organized by a tech industry trade group, attracted about a thousand protesters in Midtown Manhattan.. Sebastian Delmont, 38, who works at StreetEasy, a real estate search site, said about half of his co-workers attended the protest. "Our worry is that they are building something like a Great Firewall, like in China and the Middle East," he said.

In Washington by Wednesday morning, several lawmakers had reconsidered their support of the bills -- one in the House, one in the Senate. The legislation is intended to curtail copyright abuses by preventing American search engines and Web sites from directing users to the mostly foreign sites that allow for the distribution of stolen materials like music, movies, television shows, software and other content.

The tech industry has argued that the bills are too broad, threaten free speech, stifle innovation and most likely will not even effectively eliminate piracy.

A freshman senator, Marco Rubio of Florida, a rising Republican star, announced that he would no longer back the Senate bill, the Protect Intellectual Property Act, or PIPA, which he had co-sponsored. Senator John Cornyn, the Texas Republican who heads the campaign operation for his party, urged Congress take more time to study the measure.

"Concerns about unintended damage to the Internet and innovation in the tech sector require a more thoughtful balance, which will take more time," he posted on his Facebook page at 9 a.m.

Supporters of the bills, like major media and entertainment companies, struggled to get their message out, but found the going rough. "It's very difficult to counter the misinformation when the disseminators also own the platform," said Cary H. Sherman, chairman and chief executive of the Recording Industry Association of America, a trade group that represents the United States music industry, referring to Google and Facebook.

Mike Nugent, executive director of Creative America, a coalition of major entertainment companies and industry unions, said he was taking the long view on the issue and not focusing on the Internet protests this week. "We're digging in for a tough fight over the next week and in the longer term," he said.

On Wednesday, the corporate group began its second nationwide advertising campaign in print, radio and television to push the legislation. A banner ad with the headline "What to Do During an Internet Blackout" appeared on select Web sites and on a Times Square billboard. Suggestions included: "Read a book. Listen to music. Go to a movie. Watch the game. Tune into a show" -- all copyrighted content the legislation intends to protect.

The group will also hold town hall meetings and place robo-calls in certain districts to educate constituents on the need for these bills, Mr. Nugent said. "It really comes down to 'Don't steal our stuff,' " he said.

But the issue is difficult for some in the entertainment industry. Andy Samberg of "Saturday Night Live," for example, and his colleagues in the video comedy group the Lonely Island, as well as a number of musicians and authors, wrote a letter to Congress saying they had serious concerns about the legislation as written.

"Online piracy is harmful and it needs to be addressed, but not at the expense of censoring creativity, stifling innovation or preventing the creation of new, lawful digital distribution methods," they said in the letter.

The activity on the Web touched many different kinds of sites. More than 25,000 blogs on the popular platform WordPress chose to go black to support the cause, and 12,500 others added a "Stop Censorship" ribbon to their sites. Fight for the Future, a nonprofit group helping coordinate efforts around the Web, said 50,000 sites had promised their allegiance and pledged participation in the online demonstration.

I Can Has Cheezburger, a hub for humorous pictures of cats, and Etsy, a marketplace for crafts, greeted users with banners of information about the bills. Reddit, a community discussion site; Boing Boing, the culture blog; and the comedy video site My Damn Channel were blacked out.

The mobile restaurant finder UrbanSpoon and some news organizations, including Wired.com, blacked out some content.

Mark Zuckerberg, chief executive of Facebook who had previously remained silent about the bills, weighed in by late Wednesday afternoon. He posted on his own Facebook page, saying: "The world today needs political leaders who are pro-Internet. We have been working with many of these folks for months on better alternatives to these current proposals."

Within an hour, more than 200,000 Facebook users had clicked the Like button on his post.
Even a few in Congress joined in the online efforts. Representatives Anna G. Eshoo, Democrat of California who represents part of Silicon Valley, and Earl Blumenauer, Democrat of Oregon, blacked out their Congressional sites for the day. And by late Wednesday afternoon, Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, a Democrat in New York who was a co-sponsor of the PIPA bill, posted this message on her Facebook page: "I agree there are real concerns with the current legislation & I'm working to make important changes to the bill. We must work to strike a balance between ending online piracy to protect New York jobs & ensuring Internet freedom so our tech community can continue to flourish."

In San Francisco, 60 people gathered at the stairs of City Hall to join the protest.

"I don't go to rallies," said Anis Salvesen, 34, the marketing manager for Tripping, a travel start-up based in San Francisco. "I've been to one other rally in my life. But this legislation is bad, it would directly impact our company." He added, "We've made our point. The next move is on them and if they don't respond, then we will keep at them."

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