Organizers hope the coordinated protest will cause Congress to rethink SOPA and PIPA. | AP Photos Lawmakers shift on SOPA

Wikipedia and thousands of other websites went black Wednesday to protest two anti-piracy bills in Congress, and the dramatic virtual demonstration is already making an impact.

The protest quickly caught the attention of Net users across America and prompted a frenzy of media coverage and a flood of calls to lawmakers, while exacerbating the divide between Silicon Valley and Hollywood over the Stop Online Piracy Act in the House and the PROTECT IP Act in the Senate.


At the same time, signs pointed to a possible political shift on Capitol Hill. The latest to withdraw support was Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), once a co-sponsor of PIPA, who said Wednesday he has heard “legitimate concerns” since the bill cleared the Senate Judiciary Committee last year.

Rubio isn’t alone in defecting: Before the Internet protest even began, Arizona Republican Rep. Ben Quayle pulled his support of the House’s anti-piracy measure. And as Wikipedia, Reddit and other websites went dark, a spokesman for GOP Rep. Lee Terry told a local Nebraska newspaper that the congressman would withdraw his backing too.

It all began at midnight, as the English version of Wikipedia went offline. Blogging software WordPress “censored” items on its home page, while Craigslist hit visitors with a call to action. Google stayed open for search, but covered the company logo with a black box. Mozilla and Reddit joined the protest at 8 a.m.

“Imagine a world without free knowledge,” opened the Wikipedia home page, which transformed at midnight from an information hub to a black screen with a plea.

“For over a decade, we have spent millions of hours building the largest encyclopedia in human history. Right now, the U.S. Congress is considering legislation that could fatally damage the free and open Internet. For 24 hours, to raise awareness, we are blacking out Wikipedia,” the note continued.

It’s the ultimate escalation in the bloody battle between Hollywood, Silicon Valley and Washington over illegal content online. While all sides believe something must be done to crack down on those who infringe on copyrights, some of the Internet’s most recognizable brands believe SOPA and PIPA would saddle cyberspace with restrictions that will change the openness of the Internet while thwarting the next generation of Twitters and Facebooks.

Participating Wednesday are thousands of websites representing a broad swath of the Web community — from popular video games like Minecraft, to sites such as Failblog, not to mention individual Facebook pages and blogs. Other sites are expecting to join the protest in various ways throughout the day.

A critical test vote on PIPA is scheduled for Tuesday in the Senate. House Judiciary Committee Chairman Lamar Smith (R-Texas) recently postponed a vote to send SOPA to the chamber floor until sometime in February.

Before that happens, however, Internet activists and tech titans hope to generate enough opposition to deliver a death blow to the proposals.

Even the heavyweights are in the fray: While opting against a blackout, Google is replacing its logo and “Google Doodle” on search pages with a black box, and including a link to a new page explaining the tech giant’s opposition to both bills. A blog post this morning by David Drummond, chief legal officer at Google, alleges the bill would simply “censor the Web.”

Twitter is expected to show its support for the protest as well, though site executives have said it is not shutting down or blacking out its pages. And earlier in the day, Facebook published a special primer to SOPA and PIPA on its Facebook Washington D.C. page. The social giant decried both measures as “not the right solution” to the complex and serious problem of copyright infringement, chiefly because of the “collateral damage they would cause to the Internet.”

Together, the protests are a conspicuous display of solidarity against bills the Web community regards as existential threats to the Internet. Even after lawmakers dropped parts of SOPA and PIPA that would have allowed blocking of domain names of foreign websites that peddle stolen music, movies and other digital goods, tech leaders say the proposed laws still carry considerable risks for their companies.

To critics, the two anti-piracy bills would still allow copyright holders and the government to seek court orders compelling search engines and others to block public access to a site allegedly dedicated to theft of American intellectual property.

Hollywood studios, recording artists and other business interests frame the debate far differently. Rampant copyright theft is the real threat, they say — to American jobs, to companies’ bottom lines and to the creators themselves — and reform is desperately needed.

As the protest commenced, many industry supporters accused the Internet community of hyperbole. The chief of the Motion Picture Association of America, former Democratic Sen. Chris Dodd, took to MSNBC’s "Morning Joe" on Wednesday and said the blackout by Wikipedia and other sites is “the height of irresponsibility.”

Dodd added: “I've got young children, and when they get upset, they scream or they hold their breath. And this is sort of what this amounts [to]."

Yet the Internet blackout still prompted plenty of lawmakers to offer swift reaction Wednesday, criticizing work in the House and Senate on the same social media sites that are protesting the bills themselves.

In his clearest statement to date, Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) tweeted that he supported the need to protect copyright but “oppose[d] SOPA & PIPA,” which he described as “misguided bills that will cause more harm than good.” Sen. Robert Menendez (D-.N.J.) separately tweeted that he, too, had concerns and is “working to ensure critical changes are made to the bill.”

Also pushing for revisions are websites like Reddit, which had helped drum up opposition to the bills and to Wednesday’s blackout.

On Wednesday, WordPress.com, a blogging platform, had replaced various images on its home page with black boxes and the word “censored” — links that directed users to petitions against SOPA and PIPA.

Mozilla said it is redirecting users for 12 hours to a different website focused on the bills. Its default Firefox start page, seen by tens of millions of users, also changed: It features a "call to action" message, set against a black background.

Local pages for Craigslist also carried full-screen petitions, warning visitors to “Imagine a world without Craigslist, Wikipedia, Google, [your favorite sites here].” Referencing SOPA and PIPA, it continues: “News Corp, RIAA, MPAA, Nike, Sony, Comcast, VISA and others want to make that world your reality.” After a few seconds, the visitor is able to resume browsing the site.

MoveOn.org, the website for the popular game Minecraft and pages for tech groups like the Center for Democracy and Technology, the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Consumer Electronics Association are also participating in different ways. Each carried a variation of the message that SOPA and PIPA, even after recent proposed changes, need further revision.

Even before the protest there were signs Congress was getting the message. Lawmakers last week abandoned the domain name-blocking provisions in both proposals. The White House followed over the weekend with a statement opposing the direction of the bills, though the administration did not take an explicit position on the measures.

Still, the bills’ lead authors remained defiant.

“It is ironic that a website dedicated to providing information is spreading misinformation about the Stop Online Piracy Act,” Smith said in a statement, referring to Wikipedia. “The bill will not harm Wikipedia, domestic blogs or social networking sites. This publicity stunt does a disservice to its users by promoting fear instead of facts.”

Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), the lead author of PIPA, had a similar reaction. “Tomorrow, some U.S.-based websites that will not be affected by the PROTECT IP Act have announced that they will self-censor their content,” he said in a statement. “At the end of the day, it is still American businesses, American consumers and American workers that are feeling the brunt of this problem.”

But other supporters of the bills struck a somewhat more conciliatory note. Reflecting on the need for dialogue between the tech and content industries, Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) told an audience Tuesday that “any successful legislative product will have to have some level of buy-in from both communities.”

"What we need to have is a discourse about what works, what doesn't work, what needs to be addressed,” he added later. “A blackout doesn't accomplish that.”

Seung Min Kim, Tim Mak and Jennifer Martinez contributed to this report.

This article first appeared on POLITICO Pro at 5:52 a.m. on January 18, 2012.

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