Last week supporters of both SOPA (in the House) and PIPA (in the Senate) tried their best to downplay opposition to the controversial laws, in the process accusing law opponents like Google and Open DNS of secretly helping pirates. As of last Friday, Lamar Smith (R-Texas) and Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont) were busily insisting the government should rush the laws through then worry about the potentially devastating impact of DNS filters at a later date.
As opposition grew, both Leahy and Smith began stating they really would pull DNS filtering to save the bills. Over the weekend those efforts ran into a brick wall. It began with the White House issuing a statement saying they wouldn't support the bills in their current form:
Any effort to combat online piracy must guard against the risk of online censorship of lawful activity and must not inhibit innovation by our dynamic businesses large and small. Across the globe, the openness of the Internet is increasingly central to innovation in business, government, and society and it must be protected. To minimize this risk, new legislation must be narrowly targeted only at sites beyond the reach of current U.S. law, cover activity clearly prohibited under existing U.S. laws, and be effectively tailored, with strong due process and focused on criminal activity.
Congress also announced over the weekend they'd be shelving SOPA. While that's certainly good news for opponents, this is clearly an effort that the entertainment industry isn't going to give up on, and Harry Reid has stated he'll being sticking to the schedule in pushing PIPA through. It has been fairly clear all along that the primary target of this legislation has been The Pirate Bay, and SOPA likely would have failed in hurting the website.read comment(s)