Congress turns around on SOPA; Internet download giant shut down

This screen shot shows the blacked-out Wikipedia website, announcing a 24-hour protest against proposed legislation in the U.S. Congress, intended to protect intellectual property that critics say could facilitate censorship, referred to as the “Stop Online Piracy Act,” or “SOPA,” and the “Protect IP Act,” or “PIPA.” (AP Photo/Wikipedia)

It appears that an unprecedented Internet blackout Wednesday worked.

Half-a-dozen of the 40 original co-sponsors of what is known as the PIPA bill withdrew their support Wednesday amid a one-day protest blackout by Wikipedia and other web giants and a flood of emails to Capitol Hill offices that at times doubled normal volumes.

The issue is piracy,” said Geekwire’s Todd Bishop, “and there is no disagreement among the tech companies that piracy is a problem. What you have is the Hollywood studios and the major record labels pushing congress to really crack down on it.”

Bishop told 97.3 KIRO FM’s Ross & Burbank Show that SOPA and PIPA went too far, and that’s why saw the blackout on many websites Wednesday. “The key here was, you had all of these tech companies united, even in the past few days Microsoft and Amazon came out and said they opposed the bills too; even though they didn’t take nearly the public steps that Google and others did to inform their users about it.”

According to Bishop, the main problem with the bill was in section 103, that also allows law enforcement to crack down on enablers and facilitators, not just websites that hosted the illegal content. “The language was extremely bad.”

Just days after the U.S. antipiracy protest, New Zealand police raided several homes and businesses linked to the founder of Megaupload.com, a giant Internet file-sharing site shut down by U.S. authorities.

Megaupload is considered a “cyberlocker,” in which users can upload and transfer files that are too large to send by email. Such sites can have perfectly legitimate uses. But the Motion Picture Association of America estimated that the vast majority of content being shared on Megaupload was in violation of copyright laws.

The website allowed users to download some content for free, but made money by charging subscriptions to people who wanted access to faster download speeds or extra content. The website also sold advertising.

“I don’t think many folks would argue that [Megaupload] is a site that deserved to be shut down. It was just done without, perhaps, the due process that some of the tech companies would like to see, in general.”

According to Bishop, there are still many grey areas, like the cloud, that include upload services by Google, Amazon and Apple. “It’s just a question of accountability.”

Moving forward, Bishop said that it’s a good thing that Congress will get some time “to breathe” while they reevaluate the proposals. “There is now, an opportunity to use this breathing period […] to come back and come up with something of a compromise.”