The numbers from yesterday's day of action against the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Protect IP Act (PIPA) are staggering:
- Over 7,000,000 Americans signed Google's petition against the bills.
- According to Wikipedia, over 162,000,000 people saw their protest page, and over 8,000,000 used their tool to look up information about their elected representatives.
- Over 75,000 websites took part in the protest.
- According to Twitter, there were more than 2,400,000 SOPA-related tweets from 12:00 AM to 4:00 PM ET yesterday.
The impact the day of action had on Capitol Hill is equally staggering:
- In the House, Speaker John Boehner declared that SOPA lacks consensus, and thus would need to significantly reworked before it went anywhere:
"Listen, this bill is in committee," Boehner said. "It’s had a number of hearings. It went through a markup, and it’s pretty clear to many of us that there’s a lack of consensus at this point. And I would expect the committee to continue its work to try to build a consensus before this bill moves."
- In the Senate, the number of opponents to PIPA rose from 15 to 37, while the number of supporters dropped from 39 to 33, according to the Open Congress whip count. Further, several senators who are listed as either supporters or undecided have released statements in the past few hours calling for changes in PIPA. Among those making such statements are Sens. Daniel Akaka (D-HI), Michael Bennet (D-CO), Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) and Patty Murray (D-WA).
What this all means is that yesterday's massive protest defeated both bills as currently written. That is truly remarkable, given that Protect IP unanimously passed the Senate Judiciary Committee last year.
Still, the fight is not over, as rewrites of both bills are in the works. What these rewrites will look like remains to be seen. A revised version of PIPA will likely appear in the next day or two, as the Senate is still scheduled for a Jan. 24 cloture vote to proceed with debate and amendments on the bill. If senators do not want their websites and phone lines to melt down again, they would be well advised to vote no.
11:47 AM PT: According to ProPublica, the current SOPA whip count in the House is 108 opposed, 64 in favor. Yesterday, 30 representatives were opposed, and 80 were in favor.
2:35 PM PT: Politico is reporting, based on anonymous sources, that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has released Democrats on PIPA, and will not whip ahead of Tuesday's vote. They are also reporting that Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is telling Democrats to shelve PIPA.
3:16 PM PT: Open Congress whip count now shows 41 senators opposed to PIPA in its current form, enough to deny cloture on Tuesday.