S.O.P.A. Gone?

If you've been against the whole S.O.P.A. bill, you can breathe a sigh of relief. It is being reported by Darrel Issa, a House of Representative member, that the bill will not be taken to vote as intended by House Majority Leader, Eric Cantor. If you don't know what S.O.P.A. (Stop Online Piracy Act) is about, it's essentially a piracy bill that would hugely censor the Internet, such as on Youtube, Flickr, Vimeo, Twitter, and basically another social media outlet you can think of.

But the internet has spoken!

Massive internet protests were huge in retaining the attention of the House of Reps. Relentless tweets of #stopsopa and #blackout were trending on Twitter. Many Youtube Partners heavily vocalized their opposition to the bill, such as news analyst Philip De Franco, who is followed by a loyal audience of more than 2 million subscribers. And some websites, have blacked out, meaning for a substantial period of time their website were unavailable. A much larger blackout is planned for January 18th, as prominent websites such as Wikipedia, Mozilla, and Reddit plan to blackout for a 12 hour span.

Will the blackout still occur?

It depends. Has S.O.P.A. been definitely dismissed or has just it been shelved for now? What happens with P.I.P.A. (Protect IP Act), the equally evil version of the bill, over at the House of Senate?

With all that said, perhaps we don't need either. Nielsen SoundScan reported that for the first time since 2004, total album sales has increased from 326.2 million sales to 330.6 million sales. And not surprisingly, digital sales surpassed physical sales. Digital sales accounted for 50.3% of all album sales and increased a cool 8.4% from 2010.

Album sales will never be what they once were. But if S.O.P.A. and/or P.I.P.A. were to prevail, you can likely kiss 2011's margin of increase goodbye, as the online outlets that the government would be blocking (Twitter, Youtube) are the same outlets that artists use to promote themselves and their music.

(Check out the cool info graphic to see the rise of digital music from 2007-2009)