It was a temporary victory for the power of the internet. On January 18th, in opposition to the proposed US anti-piracy legislation of the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Protect Intellectual Property Act (PIPA), huge websites such as Wikipedia, Google, WordPress, Flickr and an estimated 115,000 other sites either blocked access to their services or publicly opposed both acts. Wikipedia’s 24 hour blackout page was accessed by 162 million people worldwide, 2.2 million tweets with the hashtag #SOPA were sent and 3 million emails were sent via the Electronic Frontier Foundation and other digital groups. The result of the blackout was a huge shift in opinion against SOPA/PIPA in the US Congress.

It’s worth reading up on why SOPA and PIPA are not ideal (If you’re stuck for time, The Oatmeal’s animated gif at theoatmeal.com/sopa explains it pretty succinctly). Their heavy handed answer to online piracy gives a lot of power to large entertainment companies to shut down and block access to sites it suspects of listing copyright infringement whether the sites exist in the USA or outside it. This means that sites such as Youtube, Facebook, Tumblr, Soundcloud and thousands upon thousands of blogs and sites could not operate as they now do. In an extreme case, Twitter could be shut down because of a single infringing tweet.

Meanwhile, opposition has begun this week to Ireland’s own statutory instrument to Irish law which may grant similar powers to outspoken anti-piracy representatives like IRMA. Stopsopaireland.com is the main hub and gathered over 57,000 signatures in opposition in its first few days. Minister Sean Sherlock is responsible for bringing in the instrument which does not need parliamentary approval and there are concerns from digital rights and law experts that Sherlock’s proposals are vague and open-ended.

Anonymous members in Sweden aimed their computers at these shores on Tuesday night apparently bringing down websites for the Department of Justice and Finance via Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks late on Tuesday night. A Twitter account @AnonOpsSweden later claimed it was a “a wake up, a warning shot.” Ireland may yet get its own blackout…