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Thread ID: 122904	2012-01-19 18:56:00	Looks Like The Cybertantrum Might've Worked -----------------	SurferJoe46 (51)	PC World Chat

Post ID	Timestamp	Content	User
1255026	2012-01-19 18:56:00	It wasn't quite the day the music died. But the Internet felt eerie Wednesday as large swaths of the online community went dark in what leaders called a historic protest to kill proposed online anti-piracy legislation. By day's end, the massive protest appeared to have completely shaken up any political support left for the already imperiled bills in Congress. Florida Sen. Mark Rubio, one of the co-sponsors of legislation in the Senate, backed away from his bill, while others in Congress voiced concerns about rushing too quickly. House Speaker John Boehner acknowledged midday that there was a lack of consensus on the legislation. <snip> The Web's 'cybertantrum' already getting results (with a) stunning spectacle in an online landscape normally consumed by business-as-usual. With thousands of website home pages filled with somber warnings about how the Stop Online Piracy Act would wrap the World Wide Web in a heavy cloak of censorship, the only thing missing was the theme from Jaws. The bill's dreaded acronym -- SOPA -- was squarely in every Web-warrior's cross hairs. Wikipedia went dark first Tuesday night, urging visitors to contact their representatives in Congress to ask that the House bill, along with its parallel Protect IP Act now stalled in the Senate, be deep-sixed. Googlegoers found a blackout bar where the Google (GOOG) logo should have been. And Reddit, the story-sharing site that calls itself the "front page of the Internet," was vowing "today we fight back." The calls and emails seem to have scuttled the legislation as currently written, with Rubio warning, "Congress should listen and avoid rushing through a bill that could have many unintended consequences." "INTERNET GOES ON STRIKE," screamed a headline on sopastrike.com, home of the nonprofit online-freedom advocacy group Fight for the Future, whose co-founder, Holmes Wilson, said he was blown away by the response of more than 75,000 people who had signed up to strike on their sites, either with total blackouts or by posting a notice. "Today the Internet is revealing the power it has to defend itself," Holmes said, adding that nearly 2 million people had visited the strike website by late morning. "But this is about more than just Internet freedom. As we depend more and more on technology, all of our freedoms are in the balance because they all depend on a free and open Internet and that's being threatened." By late afternoon, the strike website's visitors had clicked through to send 350,000 emails to Congress and "sopa" had been tweeted 3 million times, according to the tweet-metering site Topsy. Even Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg considered the bills such a threat that he tweeted his opposition..	SurferJoe46 (51)
1255027	2012-01-19 21:56:00	For now Didn't help Megaupload though...	Agent_24 (57)
1255028	2012-01-19 22:17:00	For now Didn't help Megaupload though... And neither should it.	Snorkbox (15764)
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