It was a remarkable moment — a 29 year-old Texas woman mixing it up with President Obama in a way that closely resembled the way normal humans interact. More from me on last night’s White House Google+ "hangout" here.

I’m a huge — huge! — Brian Lehrer fan, so I was thrilled to go on WNYC with him today to discuss the pushback against the Stop Online Piracy Act (aka SOPA) and the Protect IP Act (PIPA).

Also, as seen above, I stopped by the rally today outside the New York City offices of Senators Schumer and Gillibrand, an event organized by the New York Tech Meetup. It was one of the first moments that I can think of where the technology community manifested its politicization in physical form, so you might want to note it on your calendar. Counting crowds is a fool’s game, but if you said that there were a thousand people there, I wouldn’t say that you were lying.

A look at whence #fitn came. (Image source: USGS)

A bit dated, perhaps, but a post based on an interview with former Louisiana governor Buddy Roemer on his being shut out of the Republican televised debates in the run-up to New Hampshire. (Photo credit: Gage Skidmore)

SOPA — or, to give it its propers, the Stop Online Piracy Act — is roiling the tech world. In just two months, the copyright bill, currently alive in the U.S. House of Representatives, has generated some remarkable spirited opposition. But, what, when we get right down to it, does it take to actually stop a bill like SOPA from becoming a law? My reporting suggests a possible answer that’s two-fold: first, catalyzing public opinion about the significance and propriety of American lawmakers futzing with the Internet in that way, and, second, as I put it in a new piece for Reuters, "draw[ing] a line in the sand on the Internet and then push[ing] Washington’s big players to one side or another." Oh, also, I have a new piece on the topic for Reuters. Hope you might give it a read.