There is a well-defined system in American corporate life when businesses or industries see a piece of regulatory legislation coming down the pike. If the bill seems favorable to their business, they may offer support to the legislation’s congressional sponsors, or at least just stay out of the way. And if the bill poses a potential threat to the bottom line, publicists, lawyers and lobbyists are deployed to try to alter or kill the bill.
But a funny thing happened as two pieces of legislation that would affect intellectual property and the websites that may (or may not) help distribute pirated material inched closer to passage in Washington, D.C. The Stop Online Piracy Act and Protect IP Act became online memes for those who were against the bills, and some of the biggest names in the Internet business — including Wikipedia, Google and Reddit — decided to make a direct public case, culminating in a one-day “blackout” of sites that said they’d face shutdown if the bills were enacted as written.
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