I think the reaction that SOPA was the tipping point of a long building frustration in both Europe and the US. Europe had a head start with governments and acti

I think the reaction that SOPA was the tipping point of a long building frustration in both Europe and the US. Europe had a head start with governments and activists making more headway in the way of reform with Pirate Parties and a series of crippling strikes against harmful regulations. What SOPA did was drag Google and Wikipedia, two of the most used sites in the world, into the battle. That put more eyeballs onto the problem than a decade of smaller skirmishes. This galvanized a previously uninvolved but large part of the population. The flood of calls and email to our congressmen was far above and beyond anything that happened before. The other reason I believe SOPA was influential is because the US has a disproportional amount of control of the Internet in the form of ICANN, which could do more destruction even if the offending site wasn't in the US jurisdiction.