Politics

After a marathon debate on the Stop Online Piracy Act, it's clear that the Hollywood-backed bill enjoys enthusiastic support among key members of the U.S. House of Representatives and is one step closer to becoming law.

That became obvious after every legislative attempt to defang, rewrite, or significantly alter SOPA over nearly a 12-hour period today ended in victories for large copyright holders--and defeat upon defeat for the bill's critics.

The committee vote totals on the try-to-fix-SOPA amendments varied but revealed that two-thirds to three-quarters of the members of the Judiciary committee were staunch allies of … Read more

Rep. Darrell Issa, a senior House Republican, is predicting a dim future for the Stop Online Piracy Act.

"I would expect this bill is not going to become law in this Congress unless these problems are resolved," Issa, whose district includes portions of San Diego and Riverside counties, told CNET in a telephone interview.

The problems he's referring to are a long list of criticisms from opponents of SOPA, including Internet engineers, Web companies including Facebook, Twitter, Google, and Zynga, and civil liberties and human rights groups. Harvard law professor Laurence Tribe says SOPA "should not … Read more

Foes of the controversial Stop Online Piracy Act are rallying opponents ranging from Internet engineers to First Amendment scholar Laurence Tribe ahead of an expected committee vote on the legislation this week.

Their aim is to sway the 39 members of the House Judiciary committee, which oversees copyright law. The panel's chairman is Lamar Smith of Texas, Hollywood's favorite House Republican and the principal author of SOPA, which has drawn what may be an unprecedented public outcry from Internet users and companies including Facebook, Twitter, Mozilla, eBay, and Google.

Tribe, a high-profile Harvard law professor and author of … Read more

A new copyright proposal backed by foes of the Stop Online Piracy Act stops short of trying to delete "rogue" Web sites from the Internet, according to a draft reviewed by CNET.

The so-called OPEN Act, expected to be announced today by Sen. Ron Wyden and Rep. Darrell Issa, takes a less censorial approach. It tries to interrupt the flow of funds to offshore piratical Web sites by targeting only Internet ad networks and "financial transaction providers" such as credit card companies.

Forcing Internet service providers and search engines to pretend that allegedly infringing Web sites … Read more

Critics of a controversial copyright bill known as the Stop Online Piracy Act, or SOPA, are planning to announce an alternative proposal on Thursday, CNET has learned.

Their public discussion draft is intended to provide opponents of the Hollywood-backed SOPA bill, a list that includes much of Silicon Valley, with legislation that they can embrace as a less onerous way to delete "rogue" Web sites from the Internet.

Depending on the details, of course, the new legislation--backed by Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.)--could also be viewed as too restrictive.

The Wyden-Issa draft will … Read more

There is no more influential business lobby group in the world than the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which boasts that its "core purpose is to fight for free enterprise" and "individual freedom."

Which is why the Chamber's unflagging--even unyielding--support of a controversial copyright bill loathed by Silicon Valley might come as something of a surprise. Not only do critics view the Stop Online Piracy Act as antithetical to the individual freedom the Chamber applauds, but the technology industry has contributed more to economic growth and free enterprise in the last decade than Hollywood has. … Read more

Famed Silicon Valley investor and entrepreneur Peter Thiel is helping to launch a floating technology incubator 12 miles off the coast of Northern California.

Blueseed, which is planning an offshore "seastead" for foreign entrepreneurs who have difficulty obtaining visas to live or work in the U.S., said this evening that that Thiel has agreed to lead the company's initial financing round.

"We're all totally psyched," Blueseed CEO and cofounder Max Marty told CNET. It's "hard to imagine this was just an idea some months ago." (See CNET's profile of Blueseed.) … Read more

Bradley Manning's attorney has suggested that the hundreds of megabytes of U.S. government data his client allegedly handed to WikiLeaks didn't really harm national security after all.

A new document filed in Manning's criminal case provides an early glimpse at the defense's legal strategy in advance of a preliminary hearing on December 16.

The filing, which defense attorney David Coombs made public today, requests a copy of a White House "report detailing the rather benign nature of the leaks and the lack of any real damage to national security" caused by WikiLeaks. It … Read more

Joseph Lieberman, the independent senator from Connecticut, sent a letter to Google CEO Larry Page this week expressing his opinion that Google-owned blogging platform Blogger should provide a button that would let readers of Blogger-powered blogs flag "terrorist content," according to a report.

In the letter, Lieberman says that alleged pipe-bomber Jose Pimentel, who was arrested by the New York Police Department last weekend, used a Blogger-based blog to spread hate-filled screeds and links to bomb-making instructions.

(As of this writing, the blog referenced by Lieberman, trueislam1.com, appears to have been taken down.)

"As demonstrated by this recent case, Google's webhosting site, Blogger, is being used by violent Islamist extremists to broadcast terrorist content," reads the reported Lieberman letter, which was posted online by blog TPM.… Read more