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Links from Thursday's episode of Loaded:

Hollywood is responding to the defeat of a pair of controversial copyright bills last month with a new strategy: a charm offensive.

Paramount Pictures sent letters last week to universities saying the company was "humbled" by last month's online protests that involved millions of Internet users--and that it now wants to "exchange ideas about content theft" and the best way to thwart it.

The letters were signed by Alfred Perry, Paramount's vice president for worldwide content and outreach. Paramount is a subsidiary of Viacom and one of the members of the Motion Picture Association of America, … Read more

Ever since GOP presidential candidate Bob Dole claimed that Hollywood produced "nightmares of depravity" that coarsened American culture and made "deviancy" mainstream, movie studios and record labels have enjoyed a spectacularly uneasy relationship with the Republican Party.

Copyright has been the exception to that strife: since the late 1990s, Hollywood-backed proposals to expand copyright law--the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, the Induce Act, the Pro-IP Act--have all been embraced, or at least not opposed, by Republicans.

The controversy over the Protect IP Act and the Stop Online Piracy Act, or SOPA, has finally splintered that alliance. … Read more

Voters chat with Obama on Google+ Hangouts, Apple surpasses Hewlett-Packard in PC shipments (if you count iPads, that is), and almost everyone would take your call while on the toilet.

Links from Tuesday's episode of Loaded:

President Obama's first "virtual town hall" in 2009 took a legalize-pot detour. This afternoon, his first Google+ hangout with a handful of voters turned to a no less controversial topic: a pair of Hollywood-backed copyright bills.

In response to a question about whether the Stop Online Piracy Act and the Protect IP Act would levy "too much censorship on the Internet," the president stopped short of saying he opposes the legislation.

"I think that it's going to be possible for us" to find a workable approach, Obama said during the event broadcast on YouTube, … Read more

While it's common knowledge that Apple is a product trendsetter via the iPod, iPhone, iPad, and MacBook Air, its status as a standard setter is not as widely known.

Ever heard of Thunderbolt? If you have (many CNET readers undoubtedly have) it's almost entirely owing to Apple, which has been the exclusive adopter of that interface technology, developed by Intel, on its Macs. While it's unclear whether Thunderbolt will catch on in a big way, the fact that Apple has first-adopter status is one reason other device makers are taking a serious look at the technology. And … Read more

Internet opponents of a pair of controversial Hollywood-backed copyright bills won a temporary reprieve today, when upcoming votes in the Senate and House of Representatives were postponed.

But the lobbyists and politicians backing the Stop Online Piracy Act, or SOPA, and Protect IP haven't given up.

"We must take action to stop" online piracy and counterfeiting, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Democrat, said today. Reid, who previously called the Protect IP bill an "extremely important" piece of legislation, said he believed it could move forward "in the coming weeks." (See CNET's FAQ on SOPA … Read more

In the face of withering opposition, Senate leaders have postponed a vote on the Protect IP Act that was scheduled for Tuesday.

"In light of recent events, I have decided to postpone Tuesday's vote," said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nevada), in a statement.

"There is no reason that the legitimate issues raised by many about this bill cannot be resolved," Reid wrote. "Counterfeiting and piracy cost the American economy billions of dollars and thousands of jobs each year, with the movie industry alone supporting over 2.2 million jobs. We must take action … Read more

All four Republican presidential candidates today denounced a pair of controversial Hollywood-backed copyright bills, lending a sharp partisan edge to yesterday's protest against the legislation by Wikipedia, Google, and thousands of other Web sites.

The bills are "far too intrusive, far too expensive, far too threatening (to) the freedom of speech and movement of information across the Internet," former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney said during tonight's CNN debate in South Carolina.

Romney's rivals offered similar criticisms of the Senate measure, Protect IP--scheduled for a floor vote next week--and the House bill called the Stop Online Piracy Act, … Read more