The House and Senate are grappling with online piracy legislation that has provoked a massive backlash from Internet companies who oppose it. Hollywood lobbying is the major force behind the The Stop Online Piracy Act in the House and the Protect IP Act in the Senate. The two bills are aimed at ending the illicit sharing of copyrighted movies and music by websites that have cost the entertainment industry millions of dollars.
But the House bill was suddenly scuttled and the Senate bill may suffer the same fate.
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The reason? An onslaught of opposition from Web giants like Wikipedia, Google and other sites who say the legislation would foist upon them the responsibility and liability for policing the Internet against copyright infringement.
Wikipedia on Wednesday “will be blacked out globally” to protest the two bills, the site announced in a banner headline. Websites Reddit and Boing Boing will also go dark Wednesday as part of the protest.
Google will keep functioning, but plans to protest the bills through a link on their homepage.
“Like many businesses, entrepreneurs and web users, we oppose these bills because there are smart, targeted ways to shut down foreign rogue websites without asking American companies to censor the Internet,” Google said in a statement.
The piracy legislation is intended to block access to the sites that illegally share content. It would accomplish this by holding accountable the Internet companies deemed to be facilitating the copyright infringement and by making those companies block links, or Domain Name Service, to those sites.
Ed Black, president and CEO of the Computer and Communications Industry Association, said the proposed legislation would undermine the Internet address system and make it impossible for users to find non-pirating websites.
Holding Internet companies accountable for the piracy, he said, would hinder the industry’s development and growth.
“It would discourage small companies because the risk would be too great,” Black said.
The debate has pitted Internet giants including Google and Yahoo against the lobbying giants that include the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Motion Picture Association of America.
Congressional lawmakers are stuck in the middle, but it looks as though the Internet groups may succeed in blocking the two bills in their current form.
Rep. Darrell Issa, chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, announced the SOPA legislation would not be considered on the House floor, and House leadership aides confirmed Issa’s statement to The Washington Examiner.
The House bill had already been tweaked to remove a provision that would have blocked Domain Name Service for piracy sites, but Issa said the bill remains “fundamentally flawed” and so he has postponed a hearing on it.
The Senate is scheduled to take up the measure when it returns next week from a month-long recess, but there is mounting pressure for a postponement in that chamber as well.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said Sunday that he plans to take up the bill and suggested it could be changed before senators can vote on it.
The White House weighed in on the side of the Internet companies, saying the legislation as written “reduces freedom of expression and increases cybersecurity risks.”
