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“How We Stopped SOPA”

After the historic protests in January SOPA and PIPA were ‘shelved’.

In a keynote speech at Freedom 2 Connect, Demand Progress founder Aaron Swartz looks back at what happened.

Swartz explains how SOPA was effectively stopped, and why this was so crucially important.

The battle over the Internet…

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  • townie2

    goes to show that people power CAN work in a democracy. hopefully politicians  learned not to wake a sleeping lion with some of their foolish Bills.

    • Guest

      Power of the people can work in a democracy because of the internet … which they tried to take away.

      It’s a shame we protest for the internet but don’t bother to protest amongst other issues which invade our 1st world problems.

      • townie2

         but it is starting to spread, Anonymous, Occupy Movement, Quebec riots/protests, etc.

    • 3c905b-tx

      why hopefully? a sleeping lion is useless. 
      if the voters don’t pay sufficient attention to the everyday important matters, the ruling elite get away with lots of skulduggery. 

      • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_IZ5BM5GNLA54OADSWGSXAMA7SY Jay

        See also: CISPA

  • http://www.twitter.com/echoman74 echoman

    I’ve been petitioning with Demandprogress since coica and beyond. Demandprogess along with torrentfreak has been the 2 most important Influential things that’s changed my life and helping to fight against draconian legislation, bills etc.. Until the greedy fear-mongering ends. I will fight against mpaa and the riaa until they get the picture and even today they’re completely ignorant in understanding the public and what we want not them.
    Keep fighting the fight ladies and gentlemen. As i mentioned in another topic “They can’t control society when society controls them!” When we stand together as one worldwide. Regardless of where you’re from. We will become stronger wiser and much more powerful than any government or mpaa or riaa or big mouth crackheads like Chris “The criminal bankster” Dodd!

    :)

  • 3c905b-tx

    Don’t sit on your hands. the war continues. the war never ends.

    • Andrew Lee

      I don’t think they want it to end lol. They just need it to be more easy to sue people.
      What’s your job?
      Ummm Extortion.
      Of who?
      The fans. *Troll face,middle finger,and I’m over here now*

  • Yikes

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron_Swartz#JSTOR 

    On Tuesday, 19 July 2011, Swartz was charged by U.S. Attorney for Massachusetts with wire fraud, computer fraud, unlawfully obtaining information from a protected computer, and recklessly damaging a protected computer, in relation to downloading roughly 4 million academic journal articles from JSTOR. 

    According to the indictment against him, Swartz surreptitiously attached a laptop to MIT’s computer network, which allowed him to “rapidly download an extraordinary volume of articles from JSTOR.” 

    Prosecutors in the case claim Swartz acted with the intention of making the papers available on P2P file-sharing sites. Swartz surrendered to authorities, pleading not guilty on all accounts, and was released on $100,000 bail. 

    Prosecution of the case continues, with charges of wire fraud and computer fraud, resulting in a potential prison term of up to 35 years and a fine of up to $1 million USD.  JSTOR put out a statement saying they would not pursue civil litigation against Swartz. 

    Jerry Cohen of Burns & Levinson said the government’s choice to pursue criminal charges when JSTOR and MIT had resolved their civil concerns with Swartz reflected a trend of increasingly-zealous prosecution in federal courts. 

    On September 7, 2011, JSTOR announced that they released the public domain content of their archives for public viewing and limited use. According to JSTOR, they  have been working on making those archives public for some time, and the recent controversy, involving, according to a press release, “an individual who was indicted for downloading a substantial portion of content from JSTOR, allegedly for the purpose of posting it to file sharing sites”, made them “press ahead” with the initiative. 

    • Guest

      *brofist*

  • SnipSnip
  • Kool

    HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA, THE REASON SOPA WAS STOPPED BECAUSE BIG BUSINESS LIKE GOOGLE, MICROSOFT, ETC. ARE THREATENED. LOOK AT CISPA NOW, IT JUST PASSED HOUSE.

    • ANONYMOUS

       It’ll be stopped again…By the big businesses. D’oh.

      • Kool

        THERE’S A DIFFERENCE, CISPA ONLY MONITORS THE FILES THAT YOU ARE SHARING, WHAT THE BIG BUSINESS DON’T LIKE ABOUT SOPA IS THAT WEBSITES ARE ATTACKED, IN CISPA THE END USERS ARE NOW ATTACKED, NOT THE WEBSITES. THAT’S WHY THE ONES WHO OPPOSED SOPA ARE NOW TURNING A BLIND EYE ON THIS ONE.

        • James Harding

          Kool, how much are they paying you?

  • koolkat

    Yah we stopped SOPA and PIPA but now can we stop CISPA ?!!

  • Anonymous

     http://bit.ly/KpDKUP

  • BTGuard - BitTorrent Anonymously

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