sopa

Sen. Patrick Leahy, the sponsor of a controversial Hollywood-backed copyright bill, has bowed to public pressure and will yank the most controversial sections from the legislation.

The Vermont Democrat, a longtime ally of large copyright holders, said today he would delete portions of his Protect IP Act that mandate Domain Name System (DNS) blocking and redirecting.

"I'm going to set aside these domain name provisions," Leahy told Vermont Public Radio. "That we'll hold back on, because I've listened to some of the concerns on those. I think there [are] easy answers to it, but … Read more

After our first day of CES we discuss what tech is making waves in Vegas. What grabbed your attention and which products will never see the store shelves. Molly breaks down her interview with Google's Eric Schmidt and Brian Tong reflects on his time with LL Cool J live on the CNET stage.

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Congressional foes of Hollywood-backed copyright legislation came to the Consumer Electronics Show today to warn technology companies that there's not much time left to derail the controversial proposals.

The remarks from Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) were meant to deliver a blunt warning: if you were intending to do anything about proposals to levy the equivalent of a death penalty on allegedly piratical Web sites, now's the time.

"This is a crucial window here for those who want to see the Net come out of this debate without this enormous collateral damage" … Read more

LAS VEGAS--The technology community has made substantial in-roads in efforts to stop SOPA and Protect IP, two bills pending in Congress that would expand the ability of federal law enforcement and rightsholders to police the Internet for violations of intellectual-property laws.

But the fight is far from won. That was the message yesterday at a contentious panel discussion at CES's Innovation Policy Summit, featuring Congressional staffers along with industry representatives from both Hollywood and the technology community.

"Opponents have organized," said Ryan Clough, legislative counsel for Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.). "But we haven't stopped SOPA … Read more

All across Twitter these days, you can find people who are standing up to the bipartisan Congressional coalition behind the Stop Online Piracy Act. But one news site is taking its protest a whole lot further than simply plastering a "STOP SOPA" banner across its Twitter profile picture.

Reddit, a popular news aggregator, said today that it will be "blacking out" its entire site for 12 hours on January 18.

"The freedom, innovation, and economic opportunity that the Internet enables is in jeopardy," Reddit's editors posted this afternoon. "Congress is considering legislation … Read more

Rep. Paul Ryan, one of the most influential members of the House of Representatives, appears to have bowed to a campaign started at Reddit.com opposing the controversial Stop Online Piracy Act.

Ryan, a Wisconsin Republican who was talked about last summer as a potential GOP presidential candidate and who delivered his party's response to President Obama's last State of the Union address, said today that he would vote against SOPA on the House floor.

Support for and opposition to SOPA and its Senate counterpart, Protect IP, doesn't follow traditional party lines. The conservative Heritage Foundation has … Read more

Former presidential candidate Al Gore has joined conservatives at the Heritage Foundation and Americans for Tax Reform in expressing reservations about controversial Hollywood-backed copyright legislation.

Gore actually went a bit further than the Republican-affiliated groups: in a now-deleted YouTube video of a speech at a CareerBuilder event, the ex-veep warned that proposals to levy an Internet death penalty against allegedly piratical Web sites "would very probably have the effect of really shutting down the vibrancy of the Internet." (See CNET's FAQ on SOPA.)

It wasn't clear whether Gore was talking about the House of Representatives bill … Read more

Rep. Lamar Smith, chairman of the House Judiciary committee, proudly announced last month that Grover Norquist's Americans for Tax Reform had endorsed his controversial Stop Online Piracy Act.

Smith, a close ally of Hollywood on copyright law, cited ATR by name when saying that his bill enjoys "broad support across the aisle here in the House, across the street in the Senate and across the country." SOPA and a similar bill in the Senate called Protect IP would levy an Internet death penalty against allegedly piratical Web sites.

In the last few weeks, though, the famously combative … Read more

An anti-piracy law passed in Spain on January 3 has striking similarities to the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) that is stirring controversy in the U.S.

The Sinde Law, which is named after former Spanish Culture Minister Angeles Gonzalez-Sinde, lets copyright holders report Web sites that host content which infringes on their rights. The government must then choose to take action against the site or ISP. If moved along, a judge will decide whether to shut down the Web site.

What's interesting about the law is that the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) alleges the U.S. had a … Read more