The Tide Is Turning Against SOPA And We Might Actually Succeed In Stopping It
Washington’s Blog
Wednesday, December 28, 2011
While a short week ago the Internet censorship bill – SOPA – looked certain to pass, the tide appears to be quickly turning.
The conservative and liberal blogospheres are unifying behind opposition to Congress’s Stop Online Piracy Act, with right-leaning bloggers arguing their very existence could be wiped out if the anti-piracy bill passes.Digital Journal reports:
“If either the U.S. Senate’s Protect IP Act (PIPA) & the U.S. House’s Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) become law, political blogs such as Red Mass Group [conservative] & Blue Mass Group [liberal] will cease to exist,” wrote a blogger at Red Mass Group.
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“Some good news on the SOPA front: Its corporate base of supporters is starting to crumble,” David Dayden wrote at Firedoglake. “GoDaddy is not alone. Scores of law firms are requesting their names be removed from the Judiciary Committee’s official list of SOPA supporters.”
In the blogosphere, the trajectory of the bill seemed set — that it is destined for failure if the pressure of the online community is kept up.
“The dynamic is clear. Once SOPA — and its Senate counterpart, Protecting IP Act, or PIPA — became high-profile among the Internet community, the lazy endorsements from companies and various hangers-on became toxic. And now, those supporters are scrambling, hollowing out the actual support for the bill. Suddenly, a bill with ‘widespread’ corporate support doesn’t have much support at all,” Dayden said.
Conservatives took a slightly different tact, though with similar disdain for the anti-piracy measures.
Indeed, blogger Erick Erickson said that he would encourage a primary for any Republican who supports the bill.
“I love Marsha Blackburn. She is a delightful lady and a solidly conservative member of Congress. And I am pledging right now that I will do everything in my power to defeat her in her 2012 reelection bid” due to her co-sponsorship for SOPA, Erickson wrote at RedState. “Congress has proven it does not understand the Internet. Perhaps they will understand brute strength against them at the ballot box. If members of Congress do not pull their name from co-sponsorship of SOPA, the left and right should pledge to defeat each and every one of them.”
The legislation, which many are suggesting is nothing less than censorship of Internet content and an assault on free speech, has brought many disparate groups together for the first time, such as … the Heritage Foundation and Beregrond, a Libertarian website.Time to redouble our efforts … the tide may be turning, and we have a chance of winning.
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Several Washington D.C. law firms and lobbying groups were added to a list of corporate supporters by mistake and those who were willing to speak on the record were decidedly unhappy with the House Judiciary Committee. “It’s just incorrect. The firm has no position on SOPA,” Davis Wright Tremaine LLP spokesman Mark Usellis stated to Politico.
Even the White House is looking toward opposing the bill, with a petition on the White House website to veto the bill if passed by Congress. The petition needed 25,000 signatures and so far it has 43,351.
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