Networking

Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols

SOPA Derailed

By Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols | January 16, 2012, 8:50am PST

Summary: According to a prominent U.S. Congressman, SOPA will not come up for a vote and is, thus, effectively dead, but PIPA remains active in the Senate.

Darrel Issa, Congressman, announces that SOPA won't get to the House's floor for a vote.

Darrell Issa, Congressman, announced that SOPA won't get to the House floor for a vote.

U.S. House Judiciary Committee Member Congressman Darrell Issa (R-CA), and Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) opponent has announced that House Majority Leader Eric Cantor has promised him that he will not bring the bill to the floor. That mean, for all practical intents and purposes, that SOPA is dead.

In a press release, Issa announced that he was canceling his Wednesday hearing on “the impact of Domain Name Service (DNS) and search engine blocking on the Internet, has been postponed following assurances that anti-piracy legislation will not move to the House floor this Congress without a consensus.”

Issa said, “Majority Leader Cantor has assured me that we will continue to work to address outstanding concerns and work to build consensus prior to any anti-piracy legislation coming before the House for a vote.” Without the Majority Leader’s support, SOPA won’t get to the House’s floor, it will not be voted on, and this makes it essentially dead.

Why did the House reverse its course? According to Issa on Twitter, first the Internet protests had a big impact. “The House of Reps heard your #stopsopa message loud and clear.” And, in a rare bipartisan move in our current political climate, Issa tweeted, “Great news folks: #SOPA will not move in the House of Reps” citing President Obama’s anti-SOPA statement.

This isn’t the end of the story, though, Issa continued, “While I remain concerned about Senate action on the Protect IP Act [PIPA], I am confident that flawed legislation will not be taken up by this House.” “The voice of the Internet community has been heard. Much more education for Members of Congress about the workings of the Internet is essential if anti-piracy legislation is to be workable and achieve broad appeal.” Therefore, “the focus of protecting the Internet needs to be on the Senate where Majority Leader Reid has announced his intention to try to move similar legislation in less than two weeks.”

In his announcement, Issa concluded that he intends to continue to push for Congress to heed the advice of Internet experts on anti-piracy legislation and to push for the consideration and passage of the bipartisan OPEN Act, which provides an alternative means for protecting intellectual property rights without undermining the structure and entrepreneurialism of the Internet. You can learn more about Rep. Issa and Sen. Ron Wyden’s alternative, the OPEN Act at its Web site

Hate SOPA and want to join the Jan. 18 blackout? There’s a WordPress plugin for that

DNS provision pulled from SOPA, victory for opponents

Reddit’s anti-SOPA “Nuclear” protest is a good start

Should Amazon, Google & Wikipedia “nuke” the Web to stop SOPA?

Kick off your day with ZDNet's daily e-mail newsletter. It's the freshest tech news and opinion, served hot. Get it.

More from “Networking”

Google search: This time it's personal

Who, besides Wikipedia, is going dark and why

Topics

Antipiracy, Stop Online Piracy Act, Anti-piracy Legislation, House, Piracy, Internet, Business Operations, Corporate Law, Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols

Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols, aka sjvn, has been writing about technology and the business of technology since CP/M-80 was the cutting edge, PC operating system

Full Bio
Disclosure
Contact

Vendor HotSpot

Here to help you with your Document Management Needs

Read the DocuMentor blog now

Learn More »

Talkback Most Recent of 9 Talkback(s)

Follow via:: RSS; Email Alert

RE: SOPA Derailed

"Political contributions" at work again...
NoAxToGrind
16th Jan
- Reply to
- Flag
RE: SOPA Derailed

opencongress . org and let them know how you feel
mrlinux
16th Jan
- Reply to
- Flag
RE: SOPA Derailed

HALLELUJAH!!! Let's just hope that this bill doesn't resurface and get silently passed like NDAA did last year.
Crion629
16th Jan
- Reply to
- Flag
RE: SOPA Derailed

This changes nothing.

SOPA has been merely shelved, and I'd be surprised if this didn't come back as a reformed PIPA. Reforming PIPA and passing it through senate would make more sense as people would view it as a compromise.

If anything, there is more reason than ever to fight against Internet censorship and draconian copyright laws. The very fact that America has raised SOPA and PIPA shows that the Internet is far from safe and people should continue to be angry about it.

Hopefully Reddit will lead the way towards an Internet blackout, if not to get rid of SOPA, but to get rid of PIPA and to criticise those who let it get this far in the first place.
AsifHussain1
16th Jan
- Reply to
- Flag
While SOPA was bad on many levels...

@johndow1

There is a real need for tech to stop the rampant theft and piracy of copyrighted material. Part of it is education; teaching kids and punishing kids that download pirated music and movies; teach them it is the same as shop-lifting. Part of it is technology. Part of it is enforcement of the existing legislation.
Bruizer
16th Jan
- Reply to
- Flag
The Internet

@Bruizer
There is a real need for tech to stop the rampant theft and piracy of copyrighted material.

is going to make this very difficult. In fact, damn near impossible. Figure a way through that (and that alone) and you'll likely have most of the "problem" licked.

Uh, and good luck trying.
klumper
17th Jan
- Flag
It's not over 'till it's over

The blackout is still on. Many sites confirm they are not backing down - and now Wikipedia will go dark too.

A delay or compromise is not the solution sought.
symbolset
16th Jan
- Reply to
- Flag
RE: SOPA Derailed

SOPA and PIPA both need to be dead and stay dead. None of the copyright trolls have ever shown a single shred of evidence that proves they are losing billions of dollars to piracy. Real pirates will sell me a Perfect copy of a movie right down to the case & copyright notices for 5 bucks (shows what its really worth). I don't see that getting shut down by abusing the internet and everyones rights. What I do see is a bunch of people legislating things they know absolutely nothing about. Bought and paid for by the MPAA and the RIAA who claim such loses on behalf of the artists they rip off everyday. None of those ass clowns have talent for anything but paying off politicians of every kind.
Home Grown IT
16th Jan
- Reply to
- Flag
RE: SOPA Derailed

Copyright is a hard one to police and get anything done about. I should know, as I am currently fighting Google to have my book removed from their servers. Back in 2010, Google teamed up with the University of Michigan and digitised the entire library held by the university, scooping up public domain titles as well as copyright materials. Just getting Google to remove snippets view took an invoice, which they have yet to pay.

They were supposed to ask permission, but that seemed to get lost in their voracious desire to swallow the written words of everything ever published. Trying to get through to some large companies about this kind of breach of copyright can also be as difficult as hunting down those that hide in the recesses of the internet. But then again, whats the difference with someone small distributing something they do not own and a large multi-billion dollar corporation breaking copyright law. Not much, they are both culpable and in breach of copyright.

But SOPA and PIPA are a sledgehammer to crack a nut. Sometimes those that purport to do things for reasons that they believe to be in the best interest of everyone have either had their vision coloured by a third party, or they fail to see the bigger picture.

The internet is bigger than any one person, company or country. It is bringing us together in ways we never thought possible. Actions without understanding of the repercussions (short of long term) will be something that haunts everyone, just look at how the end of the war in Iraq was handled, to see bad planning in action. Any change needs to be discussed by those it is intended to impact, and the impact of any changes on the way the internet is policed needs to be viewed from a global position. As has already been mentioned, many of the internet infrstructure providers residing outside of the US would shield themselves by limiting DNS services between the US and the rest of the world.

In the current climate that would be a VERY BAD FINANCIAL MOVE. So I am glad for the moment there has been a breathing space, but as others have said, it is far from dead, watch this space and keep you finger on the pulse.
Robertdowell
18th Jan
- Reply to
- Flag