The entertainment industry’s most controversial attempt to stop piracy in the last decade came in the form of the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the PROTECT IP Act (PIPA). The bills were so poorly written they risked imposing vast new censorship systems on the internet. And the backlash to them was so severe, the internet all but shut down in protest in early 2012.

“The rejection of SOPA/PIPA was monumental in showing that Hollywood couldn't just scream ‘piracy’ to get Congress to do whatever it wanted to expand the power and control of copyright laws,” copyright expert Mike Masnick told Motherboard.

Masnick noted that in the three decades prior to SOPA, Congress had passed 15 separate new "anti-piracy" laws, none of which actually stopped piracy, but all of which gave legacy studios and record labels ever more power and control.

“The rejection of SOPA/PIPA showed that the public was no longer willing to accept vague scaremongering about ‘piracy’ as an excuse to give up more control and to limit the internet,” Masnick said.