In a significant victory for open Internet advocates, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and House Judiciary Committee Chairman Lamar Smith (R-Texas) both indefinitely postponed votes on controversial anti-piracy legislation.
"In light of recent events, I have decided to postpone Tuesday’s vote on the Protect IP Act," Reid said in a written statement.
The move followed a frantic week of political jockeying on Capitol Hill amid intense online activism, in which Wikipedia and other major websites voluntarily blocked access to their content in protest of the bills. The Stop Online Piracy Act and its Senate companion, Protect IP, would have given the government broad powers to shut down entire websites accused of violating copyright laws -- without a trial or a traditional court hearing. Hollywood movie studios and other content creators would also get new powers to sue companies like banks and advertisers that do business with websites accused of piracy.
In the House, Smith had been planning to hold a committee vote on SOPA in February, which lobbyists on Capitol Hill expected to closely mirror whatever legislative language passed the Senate. While the delayed Senate vote does not necessarily mark a final failure for the anti-piracy legislation, it almost certainly delays any vote for months. During an election year in which lawmakers are particularly cautious about bringing up controversial legislation, the bill's supporters now face a steep uphill battle to pass anything on piracy at all.
Hollywood had been pushing the bills hard for months, and had secured broad bipartisan support in both chambers of Congress. But free speech advocates warned that the power to shut down whole sites, rather than current powers to remove infringing content, created the prospect of widespread First Amendment violations, while tech experts noted that the anti-piracy tools envisioned by the legislation would threaten the basic functionality of the web.
Reid's decision to pull the bill was an unusually abrupt changing of the political tide in the nation's capital. As recently as Thursday afternoon, Protect IP opponents did not believe they had the votes to block the legislation on the Senate floor, and had almost no power to revise the bill's language ahead of a vote. On Saturday, January 14, the Obama administration issued a statement opposing the bill. Nevertheless, Reid refused to delay a vote on the bill, instead diving into a set of backdoor negotiations with Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Pat Leahy (D-Vt.) and Sen. John Kyl (R-Ariz.). All three Senators supported the original bill. No Senator opposed to the bill was included in the negotiations about how to revise the legislation before bringing it to the floor for a vote, while tech lobbyists and experts were excluded from the talks, as well.
More information:
» Huffington Post: Thousands of Websites Blackout in SOPA Protest
» FBI, DOJ, RIAA Sites Downed After Megaupload Crackdown
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