Over the weekend, the White House released a strongly-worded opposition to the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and PROTECT IP Act (PIPA). The President has threatened to veto any legislation that "reduces freedom of expression, increases cybersecurity risk, or undermines the dynamic, innovative global Internet," which includes SOPA and PIPA. Just hours after this, House Oversight Chairman Darrell Issa said that SOPA had now been shelved indefinitely by the House of Representatives. It will not be voted on when the 112th Congress reconvenes for its 2012 session. The internet has won.
Only... it's not quite that simple. PIPA might still be passed by the Senate (though it's very unlikely). More importantly, though, the House of Representatives hasn't said that SOPA is dead; merely that it's on hold until a "consensus" can be reached. This probably means that SOPA itself is dead, but in its stead Congress will now try to pass a similar law with a different name when the internet isn't looking.
It's impossible to ignore the timing of the SOPA shelving, too, just three days before huge sites like Reddit and Major League Gaming intended to stage a blackout in protest of the act. Will Reddit still go dark for 12 hours? Is it worth Reddit losing thousands of dollars to educate users on the perils of SOPA, when the word "SOPA" will never again be mentioned by Congress? In this regard, it's a genius move by Lamar Smith & Co. It was obvious that SOPA had too much negative sentiment attached to it -- and so the House simply declaws the anti-SOPA protesters and bides its time until lawmaking conditions are slightly less inclement. Voters have a famously short memory when it comes to these kinds of things -- and who knows, maybe Congress will even wait to see if Mitt Romney can unseat Obama in the next election.
The main thing now, then, is to remain vigilant. The internet has won this round, but it's guaranteed that Congress will try to pass similar laws in the future. With Senator Harry Reid receiving more than $3.5 million and Representative Eric Cantor receiving $668,000 from industry lobbies that are opposed to piracy, they're virtually compelled to try again. We mustn't rest on our laurels. We must be ready to combat doppelganger laws with the exact same ferocity that we leveled upon the now-dead SOPA.
Read more about SOPA and PIPA, the White House's response to the anti-SOPA petition(Opens in a new window), or the response from the House shelving SOPA(Opens in a new window)
