Their good intentions notwithstanding, those who believe corporations have no free speech rights (or that they should have, at most, a second-rate version of the free speech protections for individuals), should realize that only the First Amendment stands in the way of governmental punishment-legislative, regulatory or otherwise-against Google and other Fifth Estate corporations for their inciting of public opinion against SOPA-style legislation.

Peter Scheer: Battle Over SOPA Shows Why Corporations Need First Amendment Protection

At tonight’s in South Carolina, the remaining 4 candidates for the Republican nomination for president were asked if they supported the Stop Online Piracy Act. An unprecedented day of online protests over the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in the U.S. House of Representatives and the PROTECT IP Act (PIPA) in the U.S. Senate and the resulting coverage on cable and broadcast news networks finally brought one of the most important questions about the future of the Internet into a presidential debate.

Republicans very visibly score political points by opposing an issue that the tone deaf Democrats simply do not understand.

All Four GOP Presidential Candidates Come Out Against SOPA at the CNN Debate in South Carolina | Gov 2.0: The Power of Platforms

“This is altogether a new effect,” Mr. Dodd said, comparing the online movement to the Arab Spring. He could not remember seeing “an effort that was moving with this degree of support change this dramatically” in the last four decades, he added....

The companies, Mr. Dodd said, are “rethinking everything,” not just about the bills, but about their relationship with an estranged Silicon Valley.

That need for rapprochement, he said, “has come home in a way that no rhetoric of mine could express.”

Anyone who would sacrifice freedoms their forefathers died to defend for a little corporate profit is a fucking idiot.

Dodd Calls for Hollywood and Silicon Valley to Meet - NYTimes.com

If there was a political victor in the January 18th Internet Blackout to protest SOPA and PIPA, it was certainly the Republican Party. On that day, thirteen Senators announced that they had dropped support for the bill. Eleven of them were Republicans. This fact was not lost on Internet activists. Markos "kos" Moulitsas, founder of the popular liberal blogging site Daily Kos, wrote an exasperated post titled “SOPA, and the idiocy of the Democrats” in which he said:

It's been a while since we've seen Democrats this tone deaf, this oblivious to political reality.

You have an entire wired generation focused on this issue like a laser, fighting like hell to protect their online freedoms, and it's F***ING REPUBLICANS who are playing the heroes by dropping support?

The January 18th protest, in which thousands of websites blacked out their content, has a historical precedent. On February 8th, 1996 thousands of websites turned their backgrounds black to protest President Bill Clinton’s signing of the Communications Decency Act or CDA. The CDA threatened tens of thousands of dollars in fines and federal prison sentences for anyone who used a swear word in a blog post. Indecent speech is the standard applied to broadcast television and radio, where similar utterances can provoke comparable fines.

Today, I think, most people have a good enough understanding of the Internet to realize how ludicrous this idea was, but in 1996, the CDA had strong bipartisan support. Supporters included many Democratic leaders such as Harry Reid and John F. Kerry. In spite of the outrage on the Internet, it is unlikely that these supporters faced any real political consequences. At the time, the number of people who participated in Internet communities was relatively small.

However, times have changed. The Internet has grown a great deal in 15 years and Internet communities play an important role in the lives of millions of Americans. During the January 18th protest more than one million messages were sent to Congress through the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s action center, and more than 4.5 million people signed Google’s petition against the bills. Wikipedia says that 126 million people viewed their blackout protest page. That is a significant reach that the web did not have back in 1996.

To these millions, the Republican Party has sent a clear message. A few days before the protest, California Republican Darrell Issa announced that “the voice of the Internet community has been heard.” The partisan imbalance of the vote changes paints a clear picture of who is listening to that voice, and who is not.

Support and analysis from conservative think tanks may be one reason that Republicans have been so responsive. Early on, analysts at the Cato Institute were critical of the bills. Later, the Heritage Foundation expressed its opposition and included the bills on its political scorecard. ... [ Read More (0.7k in body) ]

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid won't whip Democratic votes for an online anti-piracy bill, according to sources familiar with his plans.

Senate Dems released from PIPA, sources say - Jennifer Martinez and Jonathan Allen - POLITICO.com

The goal of proponents of SOPA/PIPA is to pass something in both the House and Senate so that legislators can move “behind closed doors” into what is known as a “conference committee” and write what they want in secret.

Urgent Message : SOPA

“I think it is an important moment in the Capitol,” said Representative Zoe Lofgren, Democrat of California and an important opponent of the legislation. “Too often, legislation is about competing business interests. This is way beyond that. This is individual citizens rising up.”

Thank you Zoe Lofren for properly framing this protest as a discussion involving real voters and not just two groups of corporate lobbyists!

On the other hand, this quote is mind blowing:

Mr. Dodd said Internet companies might well change Washington, but not necessarily for the better with their ability to spread their message globally, without regulation or fact-checking.

Its not a quote. Its a journalist paraphrasing.

Did he really refer to the ability that Internet companies have to spread their message without regulation?!

If so, the observation raises a myriad of interesting tangents regarding corporate political speech as well as the obvious influence the film industry has over people's understanding of political issues.

This NY Times article contains two important quotes:

A great deal of hysteria attended the discussion of these bills, and their scope and reach were grossly exaggerated. But the bills are nonetheless defective pieces of legislation, and conservatives are right to oppose them.

I'm glad to see Republicans claiming their victory here, but at the same time I am tired of seeing the issue framed in this way:

But this is not mainly a question of high principle; it is, rather, a dispute between two competing sets of corporate interests.

The people who organized yesterday's protests were individual internet users who come from all walks of life. They were not the "tech industry."

Scrub SOPA - The Editors - National Review Online

Hossein Derakhshan is a young man I first met at Wikimania 2005 in Frankfurt.  A Wikipedia editor and blogger, he is serving a 19 and a half year sentence in Iran for his writings on the Internet.

There are many more like them, all around the world.

These, and people like them, are my heroes.

A note on bravery | Jimmy Wales

The reason for the Democrat's unyielding support for SOPA is illustrated clearly in this chart.

Motion Picture Production & Distribution: Long-Term Contribution Trends | OpenSecrets