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Protect IP, SOPA supporters vow not to give up fight
by Declan McCullagh | January 20, 2012 8:11 PM PST
Internet opponents of a pair of controversial Hollywood-backed copyright bills won a temporary reprieve today, when upcoming votes in the Senate and House of Representatives were postponed.
But the lobbyists and politicians backing the Stop Online Piracy Act, or SOPA, and Protect IP haven't given up.
"We must take action to stop" online piracy and counterfeiting, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Democrat, said today. Reid, who previously called the Protect IP bill an "extremely important" piece of legislation, said he believed it could move forward "in the coming weeks." (See CNET's FAQ on SOPA and today's Reporter's Roundtable.)
Reid's comments came after this week's historic online protest--Wikipedia going dark for a day, alerts appearing on the home page of Google.com and Amazon.com--roiled Washington officialdom and obliterated long-held assumptions about whether it would be politically safe to advance a measure opposed by millions of Internet users.
The danger for the anti-SOPA contingent is that, over time, when this week's outcry recedes into memory, Hollywood and its allies will regroup around a new bill with a different name but only a slightly different approach. The Motion Picture Association of America may have lost this round, but dozens of U.S. senators are still publicly applauding the idea, and, if history is any indication, the MPAA is willing to wait.
"I expect this threat to resurface," said Jerry Moran of Kansas, the first Republican senator to oppose Protect IP.
More:
http://news.cnet.com...-give-up-fight/
by Declan McCullagh | January 20, 2012 8:11 PM PST
Internet opponents of a pair of controversial Hollywood-backed copyright bills won a temporary reprieve today, when upcoming votes in the Senate and House of Representatives were postponed.
But the lobbyists and politicians backing the Stop Online Piracy Act, or SOPA, and Protect IP haven't given up.
"We must take action to stop" online piracy and counterfeiting, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Democrat, said today. Reid, who previously called the Protect IP bill an "extremely important" piece of legislation, said he believed it could move forward "in the coming weeks." (See CNET's FAQ on SOPA and today's Reporter's Roundtable.)
Reid's comments came after this week's historic online protest--Wikipedia going dark for a day, alerts appearing on the home page of Google.com and Amazon.com--roiled Washington officialdom and obliterated long-held assumptions about whether it would be politically safe to advance a measure opposed by millions of Internet users.
The danger for the anti-SOPA contingent is that, over time, when this week's outcry recedes into memory, Hollywood and its allies will regroup around a new bill with a different name but only a slightly different approach. The Motion Picture Association of America may have lost this round, but dozens of U.S. senators are still publicly applauding the idea, and, if history is any indication, the MPAA is willing to wait.
"I expect this threat to resurface," said Jerry Moran of Kansas, the first Republican senator to oppose Protect IP.
More:
http://news.cnet.com...-give-up-fight/
