Congress shelves anti-piracy bills
— -- The controversial anti-piracy legislation that fueled a wide-scale Internet protest earlier this week is on life support as Senate and House leaders retreated Friday and called for a compromise.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said he was postponing a vote set for Tuesday "in light of recent events."
"There is no reason that the legitimate issues raised by many about this bill cannot be resolved," he said in a statement, referring to the Protect Intellectual Property Act (PIPA), a Senate bill that would crack down on websites that violate copyrights and sell counterfeit goods. "I am optimistic that we can reach a compromise in the coming weeks."
House Judiciary Committee chairman Lamar Smith, R-Texas, who introduced the House version known as the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), also called for a delay.
"I have heard from the critics and I take seriously their concerns regarding proposed legislation to address the problem of online piracy," Smith said in a statement. "It is clear that we need to revisit the approach on how best to address the problem of foreign thieves that steal and sell American inventions and products."
The bills' advocates, including media companies, movie studios, book publishers and music recording companies, say granting U.S. attorneys general and copyright holders more power to enforce punitive actions against rogue websites would save jobs, ensure consumer safety and increase revenues.
Large and small Internet companies, including Google, Facebook and a wide array of Silicon Valley startups, say current laws are sufficient and that the proposed legislation will lead to censorship and kill the entrepreneurial spirit that fuels technology innovation.
To raise awareness and urge Internet users to call their representatives, thousands of Internet companies staged a blackout Wednesday. Some sites, like Wikipedia and Reddit, shut down for a day, while others placed prominently displayed black banners on their pages. An online petition drive by Google attracted more than 7 million participants.
Their battle over the Internet and the right of content use — as well as the limit of enforcement powers — were illustrated starkly Friday when U.S. and New Zealand officials shut down Megaupload.com, a popular cyberlocker that stored online movies and music, and arrested its founder Kim Dotcom (originally named Kim Schmitz) and some employees.
Hackers responded by taking credit for attacking the Justice Department's website and that of Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) and the Recording Industry Association of America.
That law enforcement officers were able to coordinate internationally to take action demonstrates that current laws targeting copyright violators work, says Art Brodsky, a spokesman for Public Knowledge, a Washington D.C.- based communications and technology advocacy group.
"They roped in New Zealand police and the FBI flew down there," he says. "So why do you need more laws?"
In a statement. Chris Dodd, CEO of the MPAA, said the failure to move forward with the bills will ensure continued copyright infringement, but expressed hope that the delay will start a new round of negotiations.
"As a consequence of failing to act, there will continue to be a safe haven for foreign thieves," said the former senator from Connecticut. "With today's announcement, we hope the dynamics of the conversation can change and become a sincere discussion about how best to protect the millions of American jobs affected by the theft of American intellectual property."
The bills' opponents applauded the bills' postponement Friday.
SOPA-PIPA opponents anticipated changes to the bills after several lawmakers withdrew their support following the protests. But few expected a seemingly indefinite delay to be announced so quickly, Brodsky says.
"We knew it was a possibility, but the better probability was that Reid (and several others) were going to come up with something. We hoped they wouldn't do that," he says. "This is not a bill meant for tinkering. This was a bill that, at minimum, must start from scratch."
Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., who introduced PIPA, said he respects Reid's decision but called out those who backed off from their early support. "The day will come when the senators who forced this move will look back and realize they made a knee-jerk reaction to a monumental problem," he said in a statement.
"Somewhere in China today, in Russia today, and in many other countries that do not respect American intellectual property, criminals who do nothing but peddle in counterfeit products and stolen American content are smugly watching how the U.S. Senate decided it was not even worth debating how to stop the overseas criminals from draining our economy."
Sen. John Boozman, R-Ark., and Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., both sponsors of PIPA, withdrew their support a day after the Internet blackout. Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, also backed out, urging his colleagues on his Facebook page to slow down the process.
There have been some early signs that the bills' sponsors were willing to negotiate. Late last week, Smith said he planned to scrap a provision in the bill that would have allowed copyright holders and law enforcement officials to block foreign websites accused of online piracy.
But the Justice Department and copyright holders could still ask the courts to force advertisers to pull ads from rogue websites, have credit card companies stop payments and get search engines to stop listing such sites.
The fate of the twin bills remains unclear, Brodsky says. Lawmakers could make revisions and bring them back for vote, scrap them entirely or pursue alternative bills.
Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., joined Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., in proposing an alternative anti-piracy bill that is more friendly to technology companies, called the Online Protection and Enforcement of Digital Trade Act (OPEN Act).
OPEN Act would give power to the U.S. International Trade Commission to investigate complaints and, unlike SOPA and PIPA, does not grant copyright holders "a private right of action" to target rogue sites.
Contributing: The Associated Press