Even if you don't look closely, you'll see that nearly all online groups have been against SOPA/PIPA. Reddit, along with several other major sites yesterday, protested yesterday against the universally-hated pieces of legislation known as SOPA and PIPA. The result was, unfortunately for SOPA proponents, a dramatic crumbling of support for the two bills in Congress. The Feds shall note: this is a clear victory for the internet community. Now, how exactly shall they respond?
Today, after months of legal action, the Feds moved to take down Megaupload. At the request of U.S. officials, its founder was arrested in New Zealand. Naturally, the online community boils.
Herein lies the connection that the Feds are ultimately trying to make. They have been suspecting (or just plain selling) that the online community is simply sympathetic toward piracy. They are trying to make the case that the root cause of the fervent opposition against SOPA is sympathy for pirates within the online community.
If you accept the federal government's widely-held assumption that Megaupload is a piracy haven, you will naturally see the outcry against its takedown as an expression condoning piracy.
That is the exact conclusion that the sneaky people behind SOPA (including the officials of the MPAA) have engineered it. This is what they will sell to Congressmen to win them back.
From what I've observed today on the frontpage of Reddit, everything they have planned is being perfectly fulfilled. The tremendous rage against the takedown is unmistakable. What we have here is a deep problem of credibility, one that will ultimately damage our long-fought attack on SOPA.
Yes, the effort to take down Megaupload was started months ago, but it is evident that they pushed for takedown today to as a last-ditch effort to save SOPA. I will end with this quote from CNET:
"My sources tell me the timing of the Megaupload arrests was no accident. The federal government, they say, was spoiling for a fight after the apparent defeat of SOPA/PIPA and not a little humiliation at the hands of the Web. And what better way to bolster the cause for cyber-crackdown than by pointing to a massive display of cyber-terrorism at the hands of everyone's favorite Internet boogeyman: Anonymous? ... I don't truly know whether Anonymous was cleverly goaded into #OpMegaUpload. But I do know that an attack this big on this many government sites will effectively erase those good Internet vibrations that were rattling around Capitol Hill this week and harden the perspective of legislators and law enforcement who want to believe that the Web community is made up of wild, law-breaking pirates. That, ultimately, may help strengthen the business--and the emotional--case for the pro-SOPA, pro-PIPA lobby. Did the feds just get the last lulz?"
