SOPA is the equivalent of smashing the Gutenberg press One of
the most important technological advances in the past thousand
years was Gutenberg’s printing press. As one Italian bishop put
it, it would take three printers working for three months to
produce 300 copies of a book – but it would take three scribes a
lifetime each to complete the same number. Yet it wasn’t only
the speed of the printing press that made it so revolutionary –
it was its ability to produce practically perfect copies of
written text. No longer would students have to worry about
errors or omissions introduced by scribes working off second or
third-hand copies – they could instead rest assured that their
copy was as accurate as the original master. Ideas could spread
faster, farther, and with more fidelity than ever before – not
for nothing does Elizabeth Evenden, a lecturer in the history of
books, call the new technology “the internet of its day”, with
information no longer “coming purely from the pulpits or
disseminated by governmen