After protest, Congress puts off movie piracy bill

JIM ABRAMS

Asso­ci­ated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — Cav­ing to a mas­sive cam­paign by Inter­net ser­vices and their mil­lions of users, Con­gress indef­i­nitely post­poned leg­is­la­tion Fri­day to stop online piracy of movies and music cost­ing U.S. com­pa­nies bil­lions of dol­lars every year. Crit­ics said the bills would result in cen­sor­ship and sti­fle Inter­net innovation.

The demise, at least for the time being, of the anti-piracy bills was a clear vic­tory for Sil­i­con Val­ley over Hol­ly­wood, which has cam­paigned for a tougher response to online piracy. The leg­is­la­tion also would cover the coun­ter­feit­ing of drugs and car parts.

Con­gress’ qualms under­scored how Inter­net users can use their col­lec­tive might to block those who want to change the system.

The bat­tle over the future of the Inter­net also played out on a dif­fer­ent front Thurs­day when a loose affil­i­a­tion of hack­ers known as “Anony­mous” shut down Jus­tice Depart­ment web­sites for sev­eral hours and hacked the site of the Motion Pic­ture Asso­ci­a­tion of Amer­ica after fed­eral offi­cials issued an indict­ment against Megaupload.com, one of the world’s biggest file-sharing sites.

The site of the Hong Kong-based com­pany was shut down, and the founder and three employ­ees were arrested in New Zealand on U.S. accu­sa­tions that they facil­i­tated mil­lions of ille­gal down­loads of films, music and other con­tent, cost­ing copy­right hold­ers at least $500 mil­lion in lost rev­enue. New Zealand police raided homes and busi­nesses linked to the founder, Kim Dot­com, on Fri­day and seized guns, mil­lions of dol­lars and nearly $5 mil­lion in lux­ury cars, offi­cials there said.

In the U.S., momen­tum against the Senate’s Pro­tect Intel­lec­tual Prop­erty Act and the House’s Stop Online Piracy Act, known pop­u­larly as PIPA and SOPA, grew quickly on Wednes­day when the online ency­clo­pe­dia Wikipedia and other Web giants staged a one-day black­out and Google orga­nized a peti­tion drive that attracted more than 7 mil­lion participants.

That day alone, at least six sen­a­tors who had co-sponsored the Sen­ate leg­is­la­tion reversed their posi­tions. House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, in state­ments at the time and again on Fri­day, stressed that more consensus-building was needed before the leg­is­la­tion would be ready for a vote.

On Fri­day, Sen­ate Major­ity Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said he was post­pon­ing a test vote set for Tues­day “in light of recent events.” House Judi­ciary Com­mit­tee Chair­man Lamar Smith, R-Texas, fol­lowed suit, say­ing con­sid­er­a­tion of a sim­i­lar House bill would be post­poned “until there is wider agree­ment on a solution.”

With oppo­si­tion mount­ing, it was unlikely that Reid would have received the 60 votes needed to advance the leg­is­la­tion to the Sen­ate floor.

The two bills would allow the Jus­tice Depart­ment, and copy­right hold­ers, to seek court orders against for­eign web­sites accused of copy­right infringe­ment. The leg­is­la­tion would bar online adver­tis­ing net­works and pay­ment facil­i­ta­tors such as credit card com­pa­nies from doing busi­ness with an alleged vio­la­tor. They also would for­bid search engines from link­ing to such sites.

The chief Sen­ate spon­sor, Judi­ciary Com­mit­tee Chair­man Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., cited esti­mates that copy­right piracy costs the Amer­i­can econ­omy more than $50 bil­lion annu­ally and that global sales of coun­ter­feit goods via the Inter­net reached $135 bil­lion in 2010. He and Smith insist that their bills tar­get only for­eign crim­i­nals and that there is noth­ing in them to require web­sites, Inter­net ser­vice providers, search engines or oth­ers to mon­i­tor their networks.

That didn’t sat­isfy crit­ics who said the leg­is­la­tion could force Inter­net com­pa­nies to pre-screen user com­ments or videos, bur­den new and smaller web­sites with huge lit­i­ga­tion costs and impede new investments.

The White House, while not tak­ing a spe­cific stand on the bills, last week said it would “not sup­port any leg­is­la­tion that reduces free­dom of expres­sion … or under­mines the dynamic, inno­v­a­tive global Inter­net.” On Fri­day, White House spokesman Jay Car­ney said online piracy is an issue that has to be addressed, “but every­body has to be in on it for it to work and get through Congress.”

The scut­tling, for now, of PIPA and SOPA frus­trates what might have been one of the few oppor­tu­ni­ties to move sig­nif­i­cant leg­is­la­tion in an elec­tion year where the two par­ties have lit­tle moti­va­tion to cooperate.

Until recently “you would have thought this bill was teed up,” with back­ing from key Sen­ate lead­ers and sup­port from pow­er­ful inter­est groups, said Sen. Jerry Moran, R-Kan., who cospon­sored the orig­i­nal bill but quickly dropped his back­ing on the grounds the bill could under­mine inno­va­tion and Inter­net freedom.

Moran said the “upris­ing” of so many peo­ple with sim­i­lar con­cerns was a “major turn­around, and in my expe­ri­ence it is some­thing that has hap­pened very rarely.”

Moran said PIPA and SOPA now have “such a black eye” that it will be dif­fi­cult to amend them. Reid, how­ever, said that there had been progress in recent talks among the var­i­ous stake­hold­ers and “there is no rea­son that the legit­i­mate issues raised by many about this bill can­not be resolved.”

Jeff Chester, exec­u­tive direc­tor for the Cen­ter for Dig­i­tal Democ­racy, a con­sumer pro­tec­tion and pri­vacy advo­cacy group, said Google and Face­book and their sup­port­ers “have deliv­ered a pow­er­ful blow to the Hol­ly­wood lobby.” He pre­dicted a com­pro­mise that doesn’t include what many see as over­reach­ing pro­vi­sions in the cur­rent legislation.

“It’s been framed as an Inter­net free­dom issue, but at the end of the day it will be decided on the nar­row inter­ests of the old and new media com­pa­nies,” he said. The big ques­tions involve who should or shouldn’t pay — or be paid — for Inter­net content.

Leahy said he respected Reid’s deci­sion to post­pone the vote but lamented the Senate’s unwill­ing­ness to debate his bill.

“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,” Leahy said. Crim­i­nals in China, Rus­sia and other coun­tries “who do noth­ing but ped­dle in coun­ter­feit prod­ucts and stolen Amer­i­can con­tent are smugly watch­ing how the United States Sen­ate decided” it was not worth tak­ing up the bill, he said.

In the House, Smith said he had “heard from the crit­ics” and resolved that it was “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.” Smith had planned on hold­ing fur­ther com­mit­tee votes on his bill next month.

The bill’s oppo­nents were relieved it was put on hold.

Markham Erick­son, exec­u­tive direc­tor of Net­Coali­tion, com­mended Con­gress for “rec­og­niz­ing the seri­ous col­lat­eral dam­age this bill could inflict on the Internet.”

The group rep­re­sents Inter­net and tech­nol­ogy com­pa­nies includ­ing Google, Yahoo and Amazon.com. Erick­son said they would work with Con­gress “to address the prob­lem of piracy with­out com­pro­mis­ing inno­va­tion and free expression.”

Rep. Dar­rell Issa, R-Calif., who has joined Sens. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., and Moran in propos­ing an alter­na­tive anti-piracy bill, cred­ited oppo­nents with forc­ing law­mak­ers “to back away from an effort to ram through con­tro­ver­sial legislation.”

But the CEO of the Motion Pic­ture Asso­ci­a­tion of Amer­ica, for­mer Con­necti­cut Demo­c­ra­tic Sen. Chris Dodd, warned, “As a con­se­quence of fail­ing to act, there will con­tinue to be a safe haven for for­eign thieves.” The MPAA, which rep­re­sents such com­pa­nies as Walt Dis­ney Stu­dios Motion Pic­tures, Twen­ti­eth Cen­tury Fox Film Cor­po­ra­tion and Warner Bros. Enter­tain­ment Inc., is a lead­ing advo­cate for the anti-piracy legislation.

Posted by AP News on Jan 20 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.