January 17, 2012

Obama, Cantor: SOPA Stalled Until We Have Consensus

First published on Technorati by Craig Blaha.

The controversial piracy legislation, Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) has met some strong resistance over the last few days. The White House has come out against a one-sided solution to piracy in a blog post on Saturday, saying:

While we believe that online piracy by foreign websites is a serious problem that requires a serious legislative response, we will not support legislation that reduces freedom of expression, increases cybersecurity risk, or undermines the dynamic, innovative global Internet.

In addition, Representative Issa has said that House Majority Leader Eric Cantor has assured him that the SOPA vote that was scheduled for this week has been canceled, and the bill removed from the floor until consensus has been reached.

While some have taken this to mean SOPA is dead, Forbes points out that the companion legislation to SOPA, the Protect IP Act, has already been passed by the Senate and could move forward, with modifications to appease the White House, in short order. In addition, Lamar Smith had already moved to take the DNS provisions out of SOPA, which is the part of the bill that technologists were saying would break the Internet and create a censorship firewall around the U.S.

With three piracy bills still in play; PIPA, SOPA, OPEN, and the tech community feeling as if they have defeated the one bill everyone has been focusing on, will Wikipedia, Reddit and others move forward with their planned service blackout tomorrow?

Image: http://www.newswhip.com/U.S.

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