Sopa weird

SOPA & PIPA Timeline

  • Commercial Felony

    Protect IP Act and Commercial Felony Streaming Act (Bieber bill) introduced in Senate.
    Overwhelming initial support: 40 co-sponsors, 11 at time of introduction
  • Period: to

    Sopa & Pipa

  • Protect IP

    Protect IP Act passes Senate Judiciary Committee by unanimous voice vote.
    Mark-up session is 7 minutes long and no amendments are debated.
    Bill is placed on Senate calendar.
    Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) immediately announces opposition
  • Felony

    Commercial Felony Streaming Act is passed by Judiciary Committee by unanimous voice vote.
  • Gamers

    Gamer community recognizes the broad implications the felony streaming provisions in S. 978 (which later became part of SOPA).
    Videos by gamers are increasingly posted on YouTube.
    A Demand Progress call to action gains attention.
  • SOPA

    FreeBieber.org launches against the felony-streaming provisions in S. 978, provisions that would eventually became part of SOPA.
  • Video

    Anti-PIPA video released by FFTF
    4 million+ views over next 3 months on Vimeo + YouTube
  • SOPA

    SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) introduced in House with strong support
    31 co-sponsors (12 at time of introduction)
  • sopa

    Justin Bieber says on the radio that Amy Klobuchar should be ‘locked up’ for supporting the felony-streaming provisions in S. 978 and SOPA
  • SOPA

    The House Judiciary Committee holds hearings on SOPA
  • Protest

    Responding to day of protests, Nancy Pelosi tweets her opposition to SOPA
  • Calls

    100,000's of calls during coalition-wide call-in campaigns to House Judiciary Committee
  • Colbert

    Colbert Report covers SOPA / PIPA
    One of the first major television coverage moments
    (many TV news parent companies are SOPA supporters)
  • House

    The House Judiciary Committee holds hearings on SOPA
    Huge online audience for the hearing
    Dozens of amendments introduced and voted down
  • Hearing

    Hearing ends without completing markup
  • Reddit

    Reddit post suggests transferring domains away from GoDaddy for their support of SOPA and PIPA. Over 80,000 domain names were transferred in a matter of days
    On December 23, Wikipedia announces transfer of all domains from GoDaddy.
  • Go Daddy

    GoDaddy issues statement changing their public position on the bills to opposed.
  • Ryan

    Operation Pull Ryan on reddit generates $15,000 for the opposition candidate
  • People

    People attend town halls and start organizing in-person meetings with their Senators over the January recess
  • Congress

    More members of congress start to come out against the bills citing meeting with constituents.
  • Strike

    SOPA Strike is announced for Jan 18th - sopastrike.com launches to organize protest
  • Obama

    Obama administration publishes blog post opposing SOPA / PIPA
  • Strike

    The web goes on strike, it is the largest online protewst in history precipitated by reddit.com, wikipedia, and grassroots groups
  • Pipa

    Senate plans to take up PIPA