The bills, the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in the House and the Senate version, the Protect IP Act (PIPA), would have given rights holders new mechanisms to pursue legal action against websites that trafficked in pirated content such as illegal digital downloads or knock-off software, with the ultimate goal of forcing the infringing sites to shut down.

The expressed purpose of the bills was to target so-called rogue foreign websites whose primary mission was the sale or distribution of material that violates intellectual property rights. Supporters of the measure made a compelling case that IP infringement amounts to billions of dollars in lost revenue for U.S. companies, which, in turn, negatively affects job growth.

But as the bills worked their way through the House and Senate, and appeared poised for the endgame debate early this year, a broad wave of opposition began to emerge, with digital rights advocates, civil liberties groups and many powerful tech companies protesting that the measures would create a dragnet that would ensnare legitimate companies, with a particularly harmful effect on startups. Some worried that popular social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter could be affected. Others protested that the bills would give powerful entertainment lobbies undue leverage over the Internet, with the inevitable effect of stifling innovation and free speech.

Perhaps a bit reductively, the debate turned on issues of censorship and old media vs. new. It also showcased the remarkable ability of a loose collective of concerned parties to use the Internet to coalesce their opposition into a show of strength that ultimately killed the bills. Companies like Google collected signatures to a petition, while sites like Wikipedia, Reddit and numerous others against SOPA and PIPA. Co-sponsors withdrew support, as did prominent anti-piracy trade groups such as the Business Software Alliance.

In the end, with supporters fleeing in droves, the bills were tabled, and now even prominent backers like the MPAA acknowledge that they are effectively dead, though of course those same groups will continue to advocate for new mechanisms to defend their members' intellectual property rights.