Last Thursday January 18th we saw a revolution. We saw the internet reach out of the wires that contain it and effect real change in the United States in real time. The internet collectively rose up against two bills that threatened to destroy it; SOPA and PIPA. The best look at what PIPA and SOPA are comes from (not surprisingly) Clay Shirky on TED. Do yourself a favor and watch that video and push it on your social networks to everyone.

We have seen the internet have real world impact in places like China, Haiti, North Africa and the like but I don’t think we have had anywhere near that kind impact in the United States until now.  Until now the internet has been a catalyst for business and for cat videos but it had not made significant waves in the political arena in our country. Maybe this is because, for all it’s failings, the major news outlets do a fairly good job at informing the public. It didn’t take an economic genius to see that the news media was not going to tell the American public the whole story on PIPA and SOPA as they clearly had skin in the game; we all know how their bread is buttered.

January 18th, 2012 will be marked as the day that the internet crossed the line from peanut gallery in the public discussion to a force of change.

What’s to come?

This won’t stop. The MPAA even publicly chastised the politicians that it owns so we know that these people are bold. The politicians who pressed the bill forward did so without a clue as to what it was and they didn’t care…they even laughed about how they didn’t understand it.

The next move for would be censors is the do one of two things:

Sneak the bill into some other random legislation. This happens all the time; a bill is created to say…spend a certain amount of money to feed starving children and an amendment will be added that has nothing to do with it that effectively does what SOPA and PIPA were to do.

In this new age of the interent they may not be able to sneak that by so they have to go with option two: protect kids from child predators. I expect a bill to come up in the next year or so that is sold as an initiative to protect our kids from predators and porn but it will grant the same powers to corporations and lump the cost of executing  said policing to companies that threaten old media and this will put them out of business because they can’t afford it.

Please. Please. Please educate yourself on this these issues. The news media’s hands are tied on such issues. The open internet is one of the greatest and most unifying things to happen to our species and if the cost of that is a few pirates than I am okay with that.

If reading isn’t your thing then please watch these videos:

Clay Shirky: Why Sopa is a Bad Idea

Cory Doctorow: The Coming War on General Computing

*Warning: super nerdy