www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal/2012_01/putting_sopa_on_a_shelf034765.php

Been following this very closely and the result has really lifted my spirits, perhaps even American politicians have a shred of humanity and decency left, rather than simply allowing corporations who literally tried to bribe this legislation through walk all over them.

and of course

It has nothing to do with their decency. It has to do with the fact that they saw the massive backlash against the bill by their electorates, and realising "oh shit - even if we get this through, get all the money we can ever want from the corporations backing this bill, we wont get re-elected"

Its interesting, especially in the US where your likelihood to get elected is highly proportionate to how much money you have, it takes a really extreme and ridiculous act before there is any sort of threat to their re-election. They can strip mine their state, lock up half their population under the Patriot Act without cause and even bring in acts "because God told them so" (in a region where state and religion are supposed to be separate), and these people will still be re-elected (I.E. George Bush). So the fact that they had to can this bill, which would of promised them a lot of support from most corporations, shows how ludicrous and insane it was.

oh goodie.. hope they don't try this again

Point taken, I'm speaking from the point of view of a person who has pretty much believed the US had gone fascist and didn't give a dam about their elections because they were all just faces to the same wealthy business men funding the scene. I'm glad to see votes and democracy still count for something!

Excellent news!

No doubt it will return though, possibly under the next administration. Probably as a poorly guised erosion of liberties to "combat terrorism" (see Patriot Act)

Some movies have terrorists in them > people pirate movies > therefore pirating movies supports terrorists and we must fight it with the Patriot Act!

Great success.

SOPA is shut down but PIPA, the senate version, is still on the table. It's a watered down version of SOPA but essentially shares the same sentiment.

source

**** DA POLICE

A lot of websites have blacked out in protest today