House Ain’t Voting On SOPA Until ‘Consensus’ Reached. White House Won’t Support It.
If you’re on this website, you’re clearly emotionally disturbed. Maybe. Hey don’t take offense. However, if you’re on this website you’re also probably internet savvy and you know all about the SOPA. So I won’t waste my time explaining it for the 1,000th time. However, I will tell you that the House has said they won’t vote on it until a consensus is reached.
Sweet?
Joystiq:
It’s not quite victory, but at least our defeat has been postponed. Darrell Issa, chair of the House Oversight Committee, has announced that the Stop Online Piracy Act bill won’t be voted on yet. Issa had originally scheduled a hearing for January 18, The Hill reports, but canceled it following Rep. Lamar Smith’s decision to drop the DNS-blocking provision.
“While I remain concerned about Senate action on the Protect IP Act,” Issa said, “I am confident that flawed legislation will not be taken up by this House. Majority Leader [Eric] Cantor has assured me that we will continue to work to address outstanding concerns and work to build consensus prior to any anti-piracy legislation coming before the House for a vote.”
As for that Senate action, Sen. Patrick Leahy has announced that the ISP blocking component of the Senate’s PIPA act will be removed through a managers’ amendment, so that the other parts of the bill can be pushed through while that is studied in further detail.
Huffington Post:
Saturday marked a major victory for opponents of proposed anti-piracy legislation Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and PROTECT IP Act (PIPA), which would target foreign-based websites violating U.S. copyrights.
House of Representatives bill SOPA and its Senate counterpart PIPA are designed to punish websites that make available, for example, free movies and music without the permission of the U.S. rights holders. Opponents of the bills, however, worry that the proposed laws would grant the Department of Justice too much regulatory power. Google Chairman Eric Schmidt has called the measures “draconian.” Other Internet giants who oppose the bill include Facebook, eBay, Mozilla, Twitter, and Huffington Post parent company AOL.
The White House on Saturday officially responded to two online petitions, “Stop the E-PARASITE Act” and “Veto the SOPA bill and any other future bills that threaten to diminish the free flow of information,” urging the President to reject SOPA and PIPA.
The statement was drawn up by Victoria Espinel, Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator at Office of Management and Budget, Aneesh Chopra, U.S. Chief Technology Officer, and Howard Schmidt, Special Assistant to the President and Cybersecurity Coordinator for National Security Staff. They made clear that the White House will not support legislation that disrupts the open standards of the Internet.
“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,” the statement read in part.
Interesting.