Protest exposes Silicon Valley-Hollywood rivalry

Demon­stra­tors protest in front of the build­ing hous­ing the New York offices of U.S. Sens. Charles Schumer and Kris­ten Gilliband, Wednes­day, Jan. 18, 2012. Jan­u­ary 18 is a date that will live in igno­rance, as Wikipedia started a 24-hour black­out of its English-language arti­cles, join­ing other sites in a protest of pend­ing U.S. leg­is­la­tion aimed at shut­ting down sites that share pirated movies and other con­tent. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)

RYAN NAKASHIMA

AP Busi­ness Writer

LOS ANGELES (AP) — In a move that height­ens the grow­ing ten­sion between Sil­i­con Val­ley and Hol­ly­wood, Wikipedia and other web­sites went dark Wednes­day in protest of two con­gres­sional pro­pos­als intended to thwart the online piracy of copy­righted movies and TV programs.

The web-based ency­clo­pe­dia is part of a loose coali­tion of dot-coms and large tech­nol­ogy com­pa­nies that fear Con­gress is pre­pared to side with Hol­ly­wood and enact extreme mea­sures — pos­si­bly includ­ing the block­ing of entire web­sites— to stop the online shar­ing and unau­tho­rized use of Hol­ly­wood productions.

The fight will test which California-based indus­try has the most sway in Washington.

For now, Sil­i­con Val­ley appears to have the upper hand. Sup­port­ers of the leg­is­la­tion — called the Stop Online Piracy Act in the House and the Pro­tect Intel­lec­tual Prop­erty Act in the Sen­ate — say the bills are aimed at pro­tect­ing jobs in the movie and music indus­tries. But a cam­paign includ­ing tech heavy­weights such as Google Inc. and Yahoo Inc. has suc­cess­fully por­trayed the bills as an attack on a free and open Internet.

“It has noth­ing to do with stolen songs or movies,” said Justin Ruben, exec­u­tive direc­tor of MoveOn.org, which is par­tic­i­pat­ing in the black­out. Ruben says tougher leg­is­la­tion — even directed over­seas — could make domes­tic cul­tural com­men­ta­tors more prone to legal attack.

Rather than show­ing ency­clo­pe­dia arti­cles, Wikipedia dis­played a blacked-out page describ­ing the protest and offer­ing more infor­ma­tion on the bills. Many arti­cles were still view­able on cached pages.

Reddit.com shut down its social news ser­vice for 12 hours. Other sites made their views clear with­out cut­ting off ser­vices. Google blacked out the logo on its home page, direct­ing peo­ple to a page where they could add their names to a petition.

The one-day out­age was timed to coin­cide with key House and Sen­ate com­mit­tee hear­ings as they pre­pare to send the bills to the full floor for debate.

How­ever, spon­sor Rep. Lamar Smith, a Texas Repub­li­can, sought last week to remove a con­tro­ver­sial pro­vi­sion from the House bill that could force Inter­net ser­vice providers to inter­fere with the way Web addresses work for for­eign sites deemed ded­i­cated to piracy. He post­poned work on the mea­sure until February.

Crit­ics believe such tin­ker­ing with core Inter­net tech­nol­ogy treads into dan­ger­ous ter­ri­tory that could lead to online cen­sor­ship. It might also give hack­ers a new way to wreak havoc.

The White House raised con­cerns that the bills could sti­fle inno­va­tion. Over the week­end, the Obama admin­is­tra­tion reacted to two online peti­tions, say­ing it “will not sup­port leg­is­la­tion that reduces free­dom of expres­sion, increases cyber­se­cu­rity risk or under­mines the dynamic, inno­v­a­tive global Internet.”

At the same time, the admin­is­tra­tion called on all sides to “pass sound leg­is­la­tion this year that pro­vides pros­e­cu­tors and rights hold­ers new legal tools to com­bat online piracy orig­i­nat­ing beyond U.S. borders.”

That nuanced stance is Pres­i­dent Barack Obama’s attempt at “thread­ing the nee­dle” between two impor­tant con­stituen­cies as he seeks re-election in Novem­ber, said Jef­frey Silva, a tech­nol­ogy pol­icy ana­lyst at Med­ley Global Advi­sors in Washington.

On the one hand, his admin­is­tra­tion has defended a free, open Inter­net as it watched repres­sive regimes fall in the Mid­dle East with help from social media such as Twit­ter. It has also been a pro­po­nent of the con­cept of “net neu­tral­ity,” which pre­vents Inter­net ser­vice providers from slow­ing online traf­fic that comes from file-sharing sites known to trade in pirated content.

On the other hand, Obama and other Democ­rats have gone to Hol­ly­wood dozens of times to raise cam­paign funds over the years.

“The admin­is­tra­tion is try­ing to fight to pro­tect the Inter­net space,” Silva said. “But at the same time, it doesn’t want to dis­en­fran­chise Hol­ly­wood and the busi­ness community.”

Indeed, behind the protests and pub­lic pos­tur­ing, both Hol­ly­wood and Sil­i­con Val­ley spend gen­er­ously to lobby causes in Wash­ing­ton. Accord­ing to the Cen­ter for Respon­sive Pol­i­tics, the movie, tele­vi­sion and music indus­tries spent a com­bined $91.7 mil­lion on lob­by­ing efforts in 2011, com­pared with the com­puter and Inter­net industry’s $93 million.

In the 2012 elec­tion cycle, the movie, tele­vi­sion and music indus­try offered up $7.7 mil­lion in direct cam­paign con­tri­bu­tions to con­gres­sional can­di­dates. The com­puter and Inter­net indus­try con­tributed $6.6 million.

Despite the uproar on web­sites and blogs, PIPA remains firmly in play. Sen­ate Judi­ciary Com­mit­tee Chair­man Patrick Leahy said Tues­day that he intends to push the bill toward a floor vote on Jan. 24. He said much of the crit­i­cism of the bill is “flatly wrong.”

It remains to be seen whether the two indus­tries can come to the table and nego­ti­ate a compromise.

“There are good com­pa­nies, and then there are com­pa­nies sim­ply out to pre­serve the Wild West, free-to-steal busi­ness model,” said Record­ing Indus­try Asso­ci­a­tion of Amer­ica CEO Cary Sher­man. He expects to know “within the next few weeks” whether the leg­is­la­tion can survive.

Law­mak­ers may have a per­sonal incen­tive to keep online piracy on the nation’s polit­i­cal radar, said Fred Wertheimer, pres­i­dent of Democ­racy 21, a non-partisan government-accountability watch­dog. If the issue stays alive through the cur­rent elec­tion cycle, it may help bring in cam­paign con­tri­bu­tions from high-tech donors and Hol­ly­wood later this year.

The issue “becomes an oppor­tu­nity for rais­ing more money from these groups,” Wertheimer said. “If you’re into an impor­tant issue and money is flow­ing in on both sides, then both sides can up the ante.”

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