The national day of protest against the Stop Online Piracy Act (and its counterpart the PROTECT IP Act) certainly caught the attention of the American public. Now, it appears that Congress was listening as well.On January 18, dozens of websites went dark or ran protest messages against SOPA, including popular sites Wikipedia and Google. As we have discussed on this blog, critics of the bill argue it goes too far to prevent online piracy and would unduly burden legitimate businesses.
Shortly after the protest, Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) stated that he is putting PIPA on hold. While SOPA’s primary sponsor, Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX), initially indicated he would proceed with marking up the bill, he ultimately decided to pull the measure from consideration “until there is wider agreement on a solution.”
Even before the protest, critics of SOPA got a boost when the Obama Administration voiced concerns about the legislation. The White House released a statement indicating that while it supported efforts to address online piracy by foreign websites, “[it] will not support legislation that reduces freedom of expression, increases cybersecurity risk, or undermines the dynamic, innovative global Internet."
At this point, it looks like these bills may be dead, at least in their current form. We will, of course, keep you updated as new developments arise.
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