January 21, 2012: SOPA/PIPA Blackout - After-Action Report

Looks like the good guys won this round.

SOPA/PIPA, which its sponsors thought was a sure thing two weeks ago, is now on hold in both the House and the Senate. Rupert Murdoch and his fellow media barons are huffing with outrage. ("How dare they -- how DARE they, sir! -- stand up to us? We bought that new law fair and square!") For a good wrapup, here's the BBC report.

At any rate, we seem to have won this battle, but the war is far from over. Stay tuned. SOPA/PIPA has lost its momentum for now, but Big Media has a deep war chest. Expect the bad law to be back with a facelift and a name change. And expect the free Internet to fight back again.

The highest-profile blackout, of course, was Wikipedia. For a really depressing, but still hilarious, but still really depressing snapshot of the net's DUMBEST responses to a day without Wikipedia, check out @herpderpedia. ("How coud they do this to me? My term papper isn't going to rite itself!")

As for the effects on our site: Overall traffic was significantly up from a normal day. However, most of it hit during the blackout period, which makes me think a lot of you just visited to see if we were really down. Yep, really down! We got some good comments on the blackout page and its click-through. Thank you . . . I hope some of you were motivated, rather than just amused!

-- Steve Jackson