SOPA/PIPA dead … for now
But most attempts to limit freedom tend to be like zombies – even dead they tend to end up walking among us again at some future time. But until then, good news:
House and Senate leaders abandoned plans to move on SOPA and PIPA on Friday — the surest sign yet that a wave of online protests have killed the controversial anti-piracy legislation for now and maybe forever.
SOPA sponsor Lamar Smith, the Republican chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, said his committee won’t take up the bill as planned next month — and that he’d have to “wait until there is wider agreement on a solution” before moving forward.
Apparently even within the halls of Congress, where given some of the decisions that are routinely made would make one question the amount of oxygen in the air, they appear to have figured this one out. Oh, and it is an election year. [head slap]
But don’t get too excited … they’ll be back in some form or fashion. Instead of doing the hard work necessary to create law that will protect intellectual property rights while not being overly broad and draconian, these zombies will simply change clothes, get new names and be back in another session.
Cynical?
Just watch.
~McQ
Twitter: @McQandO
The administration, true to form, is de facto enforcing the legislation.
http://news.yahoo.com/megaupload-wants-assets-back-fight-charges-201205703.html
BTW, SOPA’s not immediately obvious purpose is to shutdown blogs and open forums of the public.
It would be super easy to deliberately link copyrighted material in a comment sections. Then that blog (and host) goes down. Pretty much making it a hassle to allow public commenting. Quote too much (“too much” being arbitrary) and the blog article will cause the site to go down.
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The sad beauty of this issue is in this particular case, there was not a one sided tsunami of cash, there were competing waves of cash (and 1000 lobbyists fairly evenly distributed between the two camps) hence the collapse of the bill.
Now Hollywood, the RIAA, and other producers, will start to negotiate with Google and Silicon Valley and other tech types, to negotiate a bill that serves both of their interests.
You will notice that ciitizens are not in the mix, and their interests won’t be represented in the whatever form the bill finally takes.
We don’t have a representative government anymore, at least not one that represents the “We The People” that Constitution intended for it to represent.