SOPA effectively ran into a brick wall over the weekend after the White House came out with a statement urging SOPA backers to head back to the drawing board and draft legislation that doesn't involve censorship and breaking the Internet. As you might expect, SOPA supporters are still hoping to move forward with both bills, taking a number of tactics. One, folks like Rupert Murdoch are trying to vilify SOPA opponents like Google and OpenDNS, insisting they're secretly supporting foreign pirates. In reality, both companies simply highlighted how PIPA and SOPA are just awful pieces of legislation written by people with absolutely no technical understanding for the benefit of campaign contributors.
The second tactic of SOPA and PIPA supporters is to apparently pretend that the shelving of SOPA isn't a big deal, while repeatedly hammering the falsehood that their primary interest in passing these laws is saving and/or creating jobs. The MPAA has issued a statement downplaying White House opposition and the horrible weekend they had, going so far as to insist that "now it is time to stop the obstruction and move forward on legislation," while insisting the White House statement "clears the way for action on these important bills." Also, jobs, jobs, jobs, jobs and did we mention jobs?
We applaud the continued leadership in the House and Senate for working to enact common-sense legislation to stop foreign websites from stealing American creativity and jobs. Misinformation simply can't be allowed to replace honest debate, and derail the critically important fight to protect American jobs. We hope the Administration s role in this debate now will help steer the attention now to what can be accomplished and passed into law to protect American jobs.
The problem, as always, is that the MPAA's credibility when it comes to job and piracy statistics simply does not exist. "More jobs!" is also the rallying cry of Democrat Harry Reid, who ignores the fact that the bills could harm the one part of the American economy that is actually creating jobs, the smaller technology startup sector.read comment(s)