•October 5, 2016•

By Layne Bruce
NNW Guest Columnist

Several years ago cyberspace was frenzied over many popular websites going dark for 24 hours to protest a federal bill meant to crack down on video piracy.

The Stop Online Piracy Act – or SOPA – was a controversial and perhaps misguided effort championed by the Motion Picture Association of America to end illegal online sharing of copyrighted material, primarily movies and music.

To protest SOPA and its potential threats to the First Amendment, Wikipedia, Google, Reddit and – heaven forbid – I Can Haz Cheezburger, among many others, all shut down for a 24-hour period to show the web-surfing world what it would be like without its daily fix of photos of cats riding in baby strollers.

SOPA was eventually defeated, but a strong, valid point was made. We had come to rely on those websites for information and entertainment. Their value to internet users was unquestioned.     Login or Subscribe to read the rest of this story.