Is is now official, as actions today have put SOPA in the House and PIPA in the Senate, on the shelf until further notice.
First came news in the Senate that Majority Leader Harry Reid (Nevada Democrat) would shelve the Senate's version of the anti-piracy legislation, the Protect IP Act (PIPA). Moments later House Judiciary Committee Chairman Lamar Smith (Texas Republican) announced that he will postpone further action on the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) until there is wider agreement on the controversial legislation.
Website shutdown shows law in action
A reminder of current laws that already exist were illustrated as federal authorities shut down the file sharing website Megaupload on charges of internet piracy. Statements from the DOJ Press release follow.
"Seven individuals and two corporations have been charged in the United States with running an international organized criminal enterprise allegedly responsible for massive worldwide online piracy of numerous types of copyrighted works, through Megaupload.com"
"This action is among the largest criminal copyright cases ever brought by the United States and directly targets the misuse of a public content storage and distribution site to commit and facilitate intellectual property crime."
Perhaps the shutdown was merely a coincidence as Justice Department officials said the timing of their actions had nothing to do with the events on Capitol Hill.
We have no crystal ball or inside contacts that helped us with the timing of our article on Wednesday, Why do we need new internet piracy laws like SOPA and PIPA? But we do find it amusing that the Justice Department would take action a day later would illustrate our point.
US Justice Department website attacked
Interesting turn of events over the last day as the war on the internet piracy front turns from the halls of Capitol Hill to the internet itself. First the US Justice Department announces a shut down of what they consider a major pirate website, and then the DOJ website comes under attack. Starting last night and into today there have been outages of the DOJ website.
Seems the pirates have friends as Internet hacker group Anonymous is claiming responsibility for the attack on the DOJ website.
The war on internet piracy
Technology changes often. Congress has a way of bringing topics long thought dead back to life on short notice, And of course there is the battle cry, wait until next year.
The entertainment industry has invested too much in their campaign contributions and lobbyists for this to been put to rest forever. As we have stated in a previous article, like a villain in a slasher movie, SOPA and PIPA are far from dead, and will keep coming back to life. Hollywood is great for sequels and reviving old themes.
Not quite dead and buried, but a sign that the proposed internet piracy debate will go into hibernation mode for at least awhile.
As far as the war on internet piracy, it looks like the next chapter is already beginning,
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