In November, tech behemoths including Google GOOG , Fortune and Facebook lodged a formal complaint letter to lawmakers, saying: "We support the bills' stated goals.
Unfortunately, the bills as drafted would expose law-abiding U. Internet and technology companies to new uncertain liabilities [and] mandates that would require monitoring of web sites. Where does the bill stand now? SOPA was once expected to sail quickly through committee approval in the House. But tech companies, who largely oppose the bills, mobilized their users to speak out. Google GOOG , Fortune drew more than 7 million signatures for a petition that it linked on its highly trafficked homepage.
The bills lost some of their Congressional backers as a result of the backlash. One major tenet of the original SOPA legislation has already been removed. As originally written, SOPA would have required Internet service providers ISPs to block access to sites that law enforcement officials deemed pirate sites.
But the White House said its analysis of the original legislation's technical provisions "suggests that they pose a real risk to cybersecurity," and that it wouldn't support legislation that mandates manipulating the Internet's technical architecture. What are the alternatives? One option, of course, is that Congress does nothing and leaves the current laws in place. Alternative legislation has also been proposed.
It also beefs up the enforcement process. It would allow digital rights holders to bring cases before the U. International Trade Commission ITC , an independent agency that handles trademark infringement and other trade disputes. OPEN's backers had posted the draft legislation online and invited the Web community to comment on and revise the proposal.
SOPA supporters counter that the ITC doesn't have the resources for digital enforcement, and that giving it those resources would be too expensive. Print Comment. Did Apple save Dr. The hearings lasted for nearly 12 hours on Thursday and for several more on Friday until they were abruptly adjourned, with Smith promising that they would re-open as soon as possible. That now looks like it'll happen in early January , but don't expect the controversy to die down in the meantime — SOPA has been deeply criticized by nearly every company that does serious business online, but I'd expect the content industry to push back just as hard as we get closer to the second set of hearings.
Darrell Issa R-Ca. And we'll go through all of this again when PIPA comes up for debate in the full Senate after being unanimously approved in the Senate Judiciary Committee.
This battle is far from over. Cookie banner We use cookies and other tracking technologies to improve your browsing experience on our site, show personalized content and targeted ads, analyze site traffic, and understand where our audiences come from. By choosing I Accept , you consent to our use of cookies and other tracking technologies. Share: Facebook Twitter. Let's dig in. Here's what the government can do to foreign websites under even the most narrow reading of SOPA section and PIPA section 3 : Order internet service providers to alter their DNS servers from resolving the domain names of websites in foreign countries that host illegal copies of videos, songs, and photos.
Order search engines like Google to modify search results to exclude foreign websites that host illegally copied material. Order payment providers like PayPal to shut down the payment accounts of foreign websites that host illegally copied material. Order ad services like Google's AdSense to refuse any ads or payment from foreign sites that host illegally copied content. Laurence Tribe, a high-profile Harvard law professor and author of a treatise titled American Constitutional Law, has argued that SOPA is unconstitutional because, if enacted, "an entire Web site containing tens of thousands of pages could be targeted if only a single page were accused of infringement.
What has the response to this language been? Mozilla, which makes the Firefox Web browser, responded by creating a page saying: "Protect the Internet: Help us stop the Internet Blacklist Legislation. Web sites including Wikimedia as in, Wikipedia charged that SOPA is an "Internet blacklist bill" that "would allow corporations, organizations, or the government to order an Internet service provider to block an entire Web site simply due to an allegation that the site posted infringing content.
Even Lofgren, from Silicon Valley, has joined the fight-censorship protest. Here's another pro-SOPA rebuttal. Who supports SOPA? Chamber of Commerce. A Politico chart shows that Hollywood has outspent Silicon Valley by about tenfold on lobbyists in the last two years.
Supporters publicized letters from the National Fraternal Order of Police and the International Association of Fire Fighters lending their weight to the Web-blocking idea. Here are more statements from supporters at the time of SOPA's introduction. Over businesses and organizations have sent a letter supporting SOPA.
And in the U. An analysis by the RIAA says that of some 1, bills that have been introduced in the Senate, only 18 other bills enjoy the same number of bipartisan cosponsors as Protect IP does.
That puts it in the top 1 percent of most-popular bills, at least for this measurement of congressional enthusiasm. Here's the list of Senate sponsors of Protect IP--the total is 40 senators.
SOPA has only 24 cosponsors , but it hasn't been around as long. Darrell Issa, a California Republican, has introduced the so-called OPEN Act that would cut off the flow of funds to alleged pirate Web sites without requiring them to be blocked.
In an echo of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act's anticircumvention section, SOPA targets anyone who "knowingly and willfully provides or offers to provide a product or service designed or marketed by such entity Legal scholars contacted by CNET said Tor could qualify as a "circumvention" tool, which would allow it to be targeted.
What happens next? In terms of Protect IP, the Senate Judiciary committee has approved it and it's waiting for a floor vote that has been scheduled for January One hurdle: Sen. Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat, has placed a hold on the bill. During a two-day debate in the House Judiciary committee in mid-December, it became clear that SOPA supporters have a commanding majority on the committee. They're expected to approve it when Congress returns in
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