Jew World Order

Opponents of a pair of controversial Hollywood-backed copyright Bills won a temporary reprieve last week, when upcoming votes in the US Senate and House of Representatives were postponed.

Opponents of a pair of Hollywood-backed copyright Bills took to the streets last week in San Francisco and other cities.
(Credit: James Martin/CNET)

However, the lobbyists and politicians backing the Stop Online Piracy Act, or SOPA, and the Protect IP Act (PIPA) haven’t given up.

“We must take action to stop” online piracy and counterfeiting, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Democrat, said late last week. Reid, who previously called PIPA an “extremely important” piece of legislation, said he believed that it could move forward “in the coming weeks”.

Reid’s comments came after last week’s historic online protest — Wikipedia going dark for a day, alerts appearing on the home page of Google and Amazon — 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 last 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 (MPAA) may have lost this round, but dozens of US 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 PIPA.

Some of Hollywood’s closest allies are promising that it will happen. PIPA “deserves to be considered”, Senator Chris Coons, a Delaware Democrat, said. PIPA’s author, Senator Patrick Leahy, a Vermont Democrat, said that he hopes “to send a Bill to the president’s desk this year”.

For its part, the MPAA sounded unapologetic and unrepentant. “As a consequence of failing to act, there will continue to be a safe haven for foreign thieves, [and] American jobs will continue to be lost,” MPAA Chairman Chris Dodd said in a statement. Dodd initially dismissed the protests as “stunts”.

The unrepentant tone was shared by a collection of groups, including the American Federation of Musicians, the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, the Directors Guild of America and the Screen Actors Guild. They said in a joint statement that critics of the legislation have offered an “onslaught of mistruths” to the public.

Texas Republican Lamar Smith, Hollywood’s favourite House Republican and the author of SOPA, said that he would delay a vote on his legislation — but warned that it is only a delay. The House Judiciary Committee “remains committed to finding a solution to the problem of online piracy that protects American intellectual property and innovation”, said Smith, who counts Hollywood as the top donor to his campaign committee.

Copyright Alliance executive director Sandra Aistars said that “the status quo is unacceptable”.

Aistars, whose group counts as members the MPAA, the Business Software Alliance, News Corp and ZDNet Australia‘s parent company CBS Corporation, said that “meaningful remedies for independent artists and creators [are needed] to effectively combat the mounting problem of rogue websites.” Aistars did not respond to a request from CNET asking for an elaboration on what “meaningful remedies” means, and whether it includes attempting to block allegedly piratical websites, one of the most controversial sections of SOPA and PIPA.

Of course, wanting to enact legislation isn’t the same as actually possessing the political muscle to pull it off, and the sheer numbers involved in last week’s protest — the FightForTheFuture.org advocacy group calculates that more than 13 million internet users were involved in one way or another — will surely make politicians leery.

On the other hand, the most significant impact of website blackouts comes with the initial one. The first time Wikipedia goes offline, it’s a historic moment. The second, third or fourth time, it’s just an annoyance.

SOPA and PIPA of course represent the latest effort from the MPAA, the Recording Industry Association of America and their allies to counter what they view as rampant piracy on the internet, especially involving offshore websites. The Bills would allow the Justice Department to obtain an order to be served on search engines, internet service providers (ISPs) and other companies, forcing them to make a suspected piratical website effectively vanish. The Bills are opposed (PDF) by many internet companies, users and civil-liberties groups.

Via CNET