The battle over so-called ‘online piracy’ has awakened a sleeping tiger. For years, the Internet community has been outgunned and outspent by Hollywood and the copyright cartel in Washington. Now, proposed legislation that would enable the government to take drastic action against rogue websites and force internet service providers to police content moving through their services far more stringently has triggered a growing response from tech companies large and small. From COICA to Protect-IP to SOPA and PIPA, the acronyms have changed but the goal has been largely the same: make sharing of content harder, even impossible, to shore up the business models of intellectual property owners. But as we have been reporting, this push in Washington is now being met by a new force, made by an intriguing alliance between Internet companies, popular websites and their users.
January 16, 2012