And just hours after the 24-hour blackout started, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) withdrew his name from a long list of cosponsors for the anti-piracy legislation. Rubio’s change of heart was touted as a major victory for activists since the first-term senator was one of the first to sign onto the SOPA/PIPA legislation when it was introduced by Sen. Pat Leahy (D-Vt.) last spring.
“Earlier this year, this bill passed the Senate Judiciary Committee unanimously and without controversy,” Rubio said in a statement posted to his official Facebook page. “Since then, we’ve heard legitimate concerns about the impact the bill could have on access to the internet and about a potentially unreasonable expansion of the federal government’s power to impact the internet. Congress should listen and avoid rushing through a bill that could have many unintended consequences.”
Chris Peterson, an admissions counselor at MIT, wrote in a university blog post clarifying MIT’s stance on SOPA and how the law would destroy popular websites like Flickr and Vimeo, which rely on user-generated content.
The law would also threaten social media sites like Facebook and Twitter, where original content is constantly reposted by other users.
“The only reason a site like YouTube, or Wikipedia, or the MITAdmissions Wiki can function is because they are protected from copyright lawsuits as long as they respond to requests for takedown by copyright holders,” Peterson wrote. “Not only will SOPA/PIPA remove this protection, but they will create another level of intermediary liability for anyone who links to a site which contains infringing content.”
MIT’s Admissions blog, which is frequently updated with student posts meant to give prospective students a better idea of life on MIT’s campus, would not be able to function if SOPA is passed by the House and Senate, Peterson wrote.
“We could not ever allow them to post a picture or excerpt or class note unless we cleared with MIT’s lawyers that it did not violate someone’s copyright, somewhere, somehow,” he wrote. “The ideals threatened by these bills strike at the heart of everything MIT stands for, and what we try to do here on the blogs every day.”
Syracuse officials said there was very little student angst about their favorite online encyclopedia going dark for a day, but Ross pointed out that the Wikipedia blackout was on the second days of the spring semester – not exactly academic crunch time.
“They’re probably not scrambling to get things done right now, but if it was a different time, might be another reaction,” he said.
Material from the Associated Press was used in this report.
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