[LINK] SOPA/PIPA dead (for now)

[Jan Whitaker]

[Dodd eats crow -- admits there should have been 
more consultation. Duh. Ya think?]

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/10/mpaa-chief-admits-sopa-and-pipa-are-dead-theyre-not-coming-back/

MPAA chief admits: SOPA and PIPA "are dead, they're not coming back."
Chris Dodd adds: "Six strikes" enforcement by 
ISPs will be "educational," "not a law."

by Joe Mullin - Oct 3, 2012 6:05 pm UTC

MPAA CEO Chris Dodd speaks to the Society of 
Motion Picture and Television Engineers in late 2011.
Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers

SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA—MPAA CEO Chris Dodd 
didn't seem eager to talk about the aftermath of 
SOPA when he spoke at San Francisco's 
Commonwealth Club on Tuesday night. The former 
Connecticut senator would have preferred to wax 
poetic about innovation, California, and the 
collaboration between Hollywood and Silicon 
Valley. "Every studio I deal with has a 
distribution agreement with Google," said Dodd. 
"We've divided up this discussion in a way that 
doesn't really get us moving along as a people."

He couldn't ignore it for long. Gavin Newsom 
brought it up only briefly, but reporters 
approached Dodd after the event to get more 
details on how he viewed the SOPA aftermath, as 
well as the MPAA's Internet lobbying more 
generally. SOPA and its sister bill PIPA were 
both definitively killed off earlier this year 
after an overwhelming campaign of online action by citizens and tech companies.

Dodd sounded chastened, with a tone that was a 
far cry from the rhetoric the MPAA was putting 
out in January. "When SOPA-PIPA blew up, it was a 
transformative event," said Dodd. "There were 
eight million e-mails [to elected 
representatives] in two days." That caused 
senators to run away from the legislation. 
"People were dropping their names as co-sponsors 
within minutes, not hours," he said.

"These bills are dead, they're not coming back," 
said Dodd. "And they shouldn't." He said the MPAA 
isn't focused on getting similar legislation 
passed in the future, at the moment. "I think 
we're better served by sitting down [with the 
tech sector and SOPA opponents] and seeing what we agree on."

Still, Dodd did say that some of the reaction to 
SOPA and PIPA was "over the top"—specifically, 
the allegations of censorship, implied by the 
black bar over Google search logo or the complete 
shutdown of Wikipedia. "DNS filtering goes on 
every day on the Internet," said Dodd. "Obviously 
it needs to be done very carefully. But five 
million pages were taken off Google last year 
[for IP violations]. To Google's great credit, it 
recently changed its algorithm to a point where, 
when there are enough complaints about a site, it 
moves that site down on their page—which I applaud."

Dodd also continued to laud the "six strikes" 
plan that US Internet providers have agreed to 
enforce on behalf of the entertainment industry, 
insisting that it's an "educational" program 
aimed at illegal downloads. "If people are aware 
they're downloading illegal content, they'll go 
to a legal service," he said. "It's an experiment 
to see if we can get cooperation. It's not a law—you don't go to jail."

The MPAA won't have any kind of back-door to 
subscriber records at Verizon or other ISPs, Dodd said.

After the event, an EFF attorney in the audience 
asked, "Why wasn't that spirit of cooperation in 
the room when SOPA was drafted?"

"I don't know," answered Dodd. "There was no 
widespread conversation." Dodd seemed to think 
SOPA just wasn't seen as particularly 
controversial when it was first introduced, with 
nearly half the Senate listed as co-sponsors. 
"Going after foreign, rogue sites was not seen as 
an illegitimate idea," he noted. The bill may 
have been seen as an easy vote, until stiff resistance was seen in January.


Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
jwhit at janwhitaker.com
blog: http://janwhitaker.com/jansblog/
business: http://www.janwhitaker.com

Our truest response to the irrationality of the 
world is to paint or sing or write, for only in such response do we find truth.
~Madeline L'Engle, writer

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