SOPA Timeline

A timeline of how SOPA and PIPA went from seeming inevitable to sparking mass protest and unprecedented activism from internet organizations and web companies.

May 12, 2011

• Protect IP Act and Commercial Felony Streaming Act (Bieber bill) introduced in Senate.
• Overwhelming initial support: 40 co-sponsors, 11 at time of introduction
• http://www.opencongress.org/bill/112-s968/show
• http://www.opencongress.org/bill/112-s978/show

May 26, 2011

• Protect IP Act passes Senate Judiciary Committee by unanimous voice vote.
• Mark-up session is 7 minutes long and no amendments are debated.
• Bill is placed on Senate calendar.
• Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) immediately announces opposition

June 16, 2011

• Commercial Felony Streaming Act is passed by Judiciary Committee by unanimous voice vote.

June 30, 2011

• Gamer community recognizes the broad implications the felony streaming provisions in S. 978 (which later became part of SOPA).
• Videos by gamers are increasingly posted on YouTube.
• A Demand Progress call to action gains attention.

October 19, 2011

• FreeBieber.org launches against the felony-streaming provisions in S. 978, provisions that would eventually became part of SOPA.

October 25, 2011

• Anti-PIPA video released by FFTF
• 4 million+ views over next 3 months on Vimeo + YouTube

October 26, 2011

• SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) introduced in House with strong support
• 31 co-sponsors (12 at time of introduction)
• http://www.opencongress.org/bill/112-h3261/show

October 28, 2011

• Justin Bieber says on the radio that Amy Klobuchar should be ‘locked up’ for supporting the felony-streaming provisions in S. 978 and SOPA

November 16

• The House Judiciary Committee holds hearings on SOPA
• American Censorship Day is held to commemorate the House Judiciary Committee's first hearing on SOPA (6000 + websites)
• 1 million+ Congress contacts in one day
• 2 million petition signers
• Boing Boing, Mozilla, Hype Machine, TechDirt agree to site takeover. 4Chan and 6,000 sites also take over their sites.
• Unprecedented Tumblr blackout (first major web company direct action)
• 80,000 calls generated to Congress
• Thousands of sites blacked out their logo all day
• First mass political participation by web companies
• Rep. Lofgren participates and censors her page
• Reddit community becomes active on SOPA
• subreddit /SOPA gains 10,000+ subscribers in just a few days

November 17

• Responding to day of protests, Nancy Pelosi tweets her opposition to SOPA

November 29 — December 15

• 100,000's of calls during coalition-wide call-in campaigns to House Judiciary Committee

December 1

• Colbert Report covers SOPA / PIPA
• One of the first major television coverage moments
• (many TV news parent companies are SOPA supporters)

December 15, 2011

• The House Judiciary Committee holds hearings on SOPA
• Huge online audience for the hearing
• Dozens of amendments introduced and voted down

December 16, 2011

• Hearing ends without completing markup

December 22, 2011

• Reddit post suggests transferring domains away from GoDaddy for their support of SOPA and PIPA. Over 80,000 domain names were transferred in a matter of days
• On December 23, Wikipedia announces transfer of all domains from GoDaddy.

January 2, 2012

• Operation Pull Ryan on reddit generates $15,000 for the opposition candidate

December 29, 2011

• GoDaddy issues statement changing their public position on the bills to opposed.

January 5, 2011

• People attend town halls and start organizing in-person meetings with their Senators over the January recess

January 13, 2012

• SOPA Strike is announced for Jan 18th - sopastrike.com launches to organize protest
• Six Republican Senators ask Reid to cancel PIPA vote scheduled for Jan 24

January 13-18, 2012

• More members of Congress start to come out against the bills citing meetings with constituents.

January 14, 2012

• Obama administration publishes blog post opposing SOPA / PIPA

January 18, 2012

• Web Goes on Strike: Largest Online Protest in History, precipitated by reddit.com, wikipedia and grassroots groups:
• SOPA Strike Protest Happens
• Largest online protest of all time
• More than 1 billion people saw anti-SOPA messages on January 18
• 4 top-10, 13 top-100 US sites, 115,000 small and medium sites participated in strike, 50,000 blacked out all or part of site (Wordpress network: 27,000 blackout and 17,000 ribbons)
• Participant list
• Largest participants include:
• Google
• Reddit
• Craigslist
• Wikipedia
• Wordpress
• Imgur, Pinterest, Flickr, Amazon
• 10 million petition signers, 3 million emails, 100,000+ calls and 8 million Wikipedia call lookups to Congress opposing PIPA
• 3 million+ tweets mentioning "SOPA", "PIPA", "sopastrike", "blackoutSOPA", "stopSOPA"
• Top 10 trending search terms on google: "sopa and pipa bills", "piracy", "censorship", "blackout"
• Thousands protest outside senators’ offices in NYC, SF, Seattle, DC
• Gallery of blacked-out sites and other actions here soon.
• Senate responses:
• At least 13 senators backed away from the bill in one day. 5 co-sponsors dropped their support of the bill: Blunt, Boozman, Cardin, Hatch, and Rubio
• 1/19 PIPA Whipcount becomes meme of the day

January 24, 2012

• Senate plans to take up PIPA
• Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) plans fillibuster