Thanks to yesterday’s blackout and advocacy efforts, many legislators, including Senator Cardin, are pulling their support for the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA, HR 3261) and the Protect IP Act (PIPA, S 968). Although these legislators still feel that the piracy issues must be addressed, they now agree that these bills require changes to avoid the many negative consequences. For more information, see this Roll Call article. (For background information, see the Legislative Panel’s blog post.)
Thank you to everyone who took action on this issue! You helped to make a difference!
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OPEN Act – Promising Alternative to SOPA and PIPA Notes One Law Professor. Content from Ars Technica:
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/12/the-open-act-significantly-flawed-but-more-salvageable-than-sopaprotect-ip.ars
(c) update: The controversial SOPA and PIPA bills may now be dead, but a recent GAO report had questioned government and lobby figures used to quantify lost revenue due to piracy/counterfeiting efforts: http://www.gao.gov/assets/310/303057.pdf. The report even indicates that there may be financial benefit to some piracy activity.
Trade agreements ACTA and TPP may provide similar threats as SOPA without legislative or judicial review: https://www.eff.org/issues/tpp.
Find out what the Register of Copyright’s priorities are to 2013:
http://www.copyright.gov/docs/priorities.pdf
EFF weighs in on new IP anti-piracy legislation, the OPEN Act (H.R.3782 and S. 2029):
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2011/12/open-act-good-bad-and-practice-participatory-government. Public comment on the OPEN Act’s provisions are accepted here: http://www.keepthewebopen.com/