Question of the Week: The Meaning of SOPA — Updated

Since a substantial chunk of the Internet is on strike today, we were wondering about your take on all this.

The debate over SOPA — the Stop Online Privacy Piracy Act, as it is known in its House incarnation, or the Protect Intellectual Property Act in the Senate — had seemed kind of obscure and wonkish to me, having to do with illegal downloads of music or movies, Hollywood versus Silicon Valley, two industries at odds. OK fine, y’all work it out and let us know.

Then Silicon Valley went nuclear, with Wikipedia, Reddit and hundreds of other sites prominent and obscure shutting themselves down for a day. That got people’s attention. One site still available: sopastrike.com, established to document the protest.

Others took part in different ways. Google blacked out its name on its famously spartan home page as if to suggest they were being censored. Daily Kos, the commentary site, put an overlay on its page.

And all this even though the sponsors of the bills had agreed to pull back the legislation for retooling.

It has been interesting to see the united opposition on the Internet, from liberal voices to conservatives and more conservatives and libertarians. Finally, something people can agree on.

Now it’s your turn. Since peHUB is still up, you can vent here.

UPDATE: This survey is now closed. For results, click here.

Steve Bills is a senior editor at Buyouts Magazine. Any opinions expressed here are entirely his own. Follow him on Twitter @Steve_Bills. Follow Buyouts tweets @Buyouts. For information on how to subscribe, contact Greg Winterton at greg.winterton@thomsonreuters.com.