SOPA Stopped - PIPA Moving

The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), which would fundamentally alter the Internet and the way it is used, has been shelved from consideration by the U.S. House of Representatives. This is good news, but SOPA's sister bill, the Protect Intellectual Property Act (PIPA), is up for a vote in the U.S. Senate next Tuesday. Many of the provisions in that bill are similar to SOPA, which is adamantly opposed in the House by Representative Darrell Issa (R-CA), and Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) has threatened to filibuster PIPA if it comes up on January 24 as scheduled.

The provisions of PIPA include the right of Internet service providers to voluntarily block sites suspected of even the mildest copyright infringement and punitive action against sites that give Internet users information on how to access blocked sites. Any site can be blocked or shut down by the federal government at whim if it is suspected of copyright infringement of any sort. Essentially, it (like SOPA) advocates Internet censorship.  Also, SOPA as written would allow domain name servers to be filtered or blocked, which computer experts say could weaken the global Internet, as the provision would have a long, global reach against all Web sites irrespective of country of origin.

With progressives and Tea Partiers alike opposing these bills (and with Wikipedia's English-language pages  going black for tomorrow in protest), the prospects for their eventual defeat are fairly bright. They just got brighter, in fact, with a statement from White House, which said that it could not support "legislation that reduces freedom of expression, increases cybersecurity risk, or undermines the dynamic, innovative global Internet." President Obama, however, hasn't flatly ruled out signing whatever bill comes to his desk.

I myself could be affected by this legislation. If YouTube is shut down for having too many videos infringing on copyrights, I won't be able to continue my Music Video Of the Week feature on my blog. This blog itself could easily shut down by using quotes from other sources, credited or not. And since I use photos on my beautiful women picture blog that are not my own (like I can really use a picture of Reese Witherspoon that I took myself) and come from a variety of sources, every goshdarn picture could be deemed an illegal copyright infringement.

I have a special post on this subject planned for tomorrow. Tune in then to see what is.

The Issa Man Cometh

U.S. Representative Darrell Issa (R-CA), incoming chairman of the House Government Oversight Committee, is hitting the ground running with promises of investigations and probes in the Obama administration to look into charges of corruption that have been made by . . . Darrell Issa! The congressman has charged that President Obama has given federal stimulus money to special interest groups for political purposes and tried to bribe Joe Sestak into dropping his opposition to Arlen Specter in the U.S. Senate primary election in Pennsylvania. Where there's smoke, there's fire, but the smoke in this case is coming entirely out of Issa's ears.

No matter. If Issa holds as many hearings as and issues as many subpoenas as he's threatened to do, he may not find any evidence of scandal, but he will certainly hamper Obama's efforts to get anything done in advance of the 2012 presidential elections. Issa's Inspector Javert act has succeeded in unseating one elected official, California governor Gray Davis; it was Issa who spearheaded the successful 2003 recall of Davis. Obama will have allies on the House Government Oversight Committee - namely ranking Democrat Elijah Cummings of Maryland - to challenge Issa's accusations, but Issa will, as chairman, still have the final say on the committee's agenda. My advice to President Obama is to cooperate as much with the House Government Oversight Committee as possible - it's highly unlikely that they have anything to hide - and stonewall Issa's sillier questions. No one should give Issa any room to cast himself as a champion of the people in the pursuit of justice. Because the media are gullible enough to fall for that.