A fond look back at the saga that was SOPA

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SALT LAKE CITY — This article contains common Internet and “nerd” references. If you are easily confused by toaster ovens, mouse cursors quickly moving around digital screens or pop culture references, put your head between your legs and read a good old fashioned newspaper. You can download them for free on your iPad.

“I don’t usually get involved in politics, but …” If you happen to be one of those few people who use the Internet, then over the past few weeks you most likely heard/read statements like this from all over the World Wide Web.

The cause of these statements was more often than not the House bill called the Stop Online Pirating Act, which was recently tabled for a time when “There is wider agreement on a solution” according to bill creator, Senator Lamar Smith (R-TX). Likewise, SOPA’s sister bill PIPA was postponed in the senate.

SOPA caught some flak for its apparent shotgun approach to a very serious problem of online pirating. But the general vagueness of the law left the sour taste in people’s mouthes as the bill appeared to grant the government the ability to shut down Websites at will if there was any sort of copyright infringement. Given that the Internet is 100 percent composed of Katy Perry covers, cats, recipes for stuffed mushrooms and pornography, people had very good reason to fear.

It also didn’t help that all the supporting members in Congress reiterated that they in fact had no real idea how the Internet worked because, naturally, they weren’t nerds.

With the tabling of the bill, the “Internetz” quickly declared victory, with the combined voices of hundreds of influential personalities, a 75,000 Website blackout/protest on Jan. 18, and of course a miniscule amount of lobbying to stop the greatest threat to Internet freedom since China.

So in the end it appears SOPA will be remembered as a minor bump in the road of the Internet, an example of how much control lobbying can have over our non-nerd Congressmen, how inefficient bureaucries can be in combating a very real problem, and that Hitler sounded reasonable compared to the House.

Or most likely it will simply be remembered as that day I needed to do a history paper and Wikipedia decided the best way to get me on its side was by shutting down its entire English archive (it’s amazing how the drive to get a “B” can help you learn German in a day).

But in retrospect, I think SOPA deserves to be looked at in a much more amiable light. Sure, it was vaguely threatening to freedom of speech, but even in this time of extreme political divide and rhetoric, wealth inequality, and the bitter resentment over Ryan Gosling not winning hottest man of the year, Americans were able to come together against a single issue. Not since Watergate or "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen" have Americans been so unified in disliking something.

Glenn Beck and Huskystarcaft found themselves on the same side, something which never would have happened under any other given circumstances, given Beck's belief that the Protoss are a pagan socialist commune.

(Side Note: Glenn Beck and pornography Websites were also on the same page. The benefits to standup-comedy acts are just beginning to be realized.)

"Catz" were driven to new levels of political activism, clinging to their precious cheezeburgerz and memes. Not only were they adorable, but their fluffiness was a reminder to everyone that if we wanted to continue to see cats do normal cat things but with captions, the Internet would have to be protected at all costs.

Google had a new excuse to use a new homepage.

We found something that flip flops more than Mitt Romney when GoDaddy.com became for SOPA and then quickly against the moment its customers threatened to leave them (“it’s not me, it’s your stance on Internet censorship”). Mitt Romney supporters surely cashed in on bets they long assumed lost.

And maybe, just maybe, we remember it for not what to do the next time we attempt to combat the very serious problem of illegal downloading. Internet freedom and the right to make money off of your work are two principals worth protecting, and there’s no reason one has to come at the expense of the other. Maybe next time both sides, those nerds who use the Internet and jocks on Capitol Hill, will work together to combat pirating (both online and the Somali type).

In the meantime, companies should work towards creating better services than their pirating cousins can provide. If the constant 100 percent increases in sales for Internet distribution site Steam are any indication, people are still more than willing to pay for things and abide by the laws. Or companies can just add invincible scorpions to protect their games.

Now go enjoy a cheezeburger.

Freeman Stevenson is a full-time college student and was a former cognoscenti of the Internet until he took an arrow to the knee.