Harry Reid calls off next week’s vote on PIPA

Anoth­er vic­to­ry! From Sen­a­tor Har­ry Rei­d’s office:

In light of recent events, I have decid­ed to post­pone Tuesday’s vote on the PROTECT I.P. Act.

There is no rea­son that the legit­i­mate issues raised by many about this bill can­not be resolved. Coun­ter­feit­ing and pira­cy cost the Amer­i­can econ­o­my bil­lions of dol­lars and thou­sands of jobs each year, with the movie indus­try alone sup­port­ing over 2.2 mil­lion jobs. We must take action to stop these ille­gal prac­tices. We live in a coun­try where peo­ple right­ful­ly expect to be fair­ly com­pen­sat­ed for a day’s work, whether that per­son is a min­er in the high desert of Neva­da, an inde­pen­dent band in New York City, or a union work­er on the back lots of a Cal­i­for­nia movie studio.

I admire the work that Chair­man Leahy has put into this bill. I encour­age him to con­tin­ue engag­ing with all stake­hold­ers to forge a bal­ance between pro­tect­ing Amer­i­cans’ intel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty, and main­tain­ing open­ness and inno­va­tion on the inter­net. We made good progress through the dis­cus­sions we’ve held in recent days, and I am opti­mistic that we can reach a com­pro­mise in the com­ing weeks.

Reid had ear­li­er said he would not both­er whip­ping Demo­c­ra­t­ic votes for the bill. Now he’s putting off the vote togeth­er, which is great news. It does­n’t mean PIPA is dead, but at least it’s not going to be advanc­ing next week.

This vic­to­ry would not have hap­pened were it not for Wednes­day’s Inter­net strike. Our day of action con­vinced more than half a dozen PIPA co-spon­sors to drop their sup­port of the leg­is­la­tion, and led more than a dozen unde­clared sen­a­tors to announce their oppo­si­tion for the first time.

Now we’ve achieved some­thing more: We’ve forced Sen­ate Major­i­ty Leader Har­ry Reid — a self-pro­claimed “admir­er” of the bill as draft­ed — to pull it off of the table for the time being. That’s a pret­ty sig­nif­i­cant accomplishment.

The MPAA’s Chris Dodd has con­ced­ed that SOPA and PIPA’s momen­tum has been lost. He gave away as much in  a con­ver­sa­tion with the New York Times, which sought an inter­view with him to get his reac­tion to the Inter­net strike.

On Thurs­day, how­ev­er, Mr. Dodd appeared to have all but thrown in the tow­el on the bills in their cur­rent form, and was talk­ing about lessons learned. He acknowl­edged his side had com­mit­ted a mis­step by allow­ing Hol­ly­wood to become the face of laws that were intend­ed to pro­tect not just movies, but also more mun­dane prod­ucts — for instance, home smoke alarms — that are fre­quent­ly coun­ter­feit­ed abroad, some­times with dis­as­trous effects.

If Dodd tru­ly thinks that Hol­ly­wood’s only mis­step was not being clever enough with its P.R., he’s got more dis­ap­point­ments com­ing to him.

Sup­port for SOPA and PIPA col­lapsed because the bills that Dod­d’s own peo­ple helped draw up are fatal­ly flawed. Dodd and his crew of lob­by­ists do not under­stand how the Inter­net works, and they still (wrong­ly) think the best way to grow their prof­its is through puni­tive, dra­con­ian leg­is­la­tion instead of innovation.

For years, the MPAA (Motion Pic­ture Asso­ci­a­tion of Amer­i­ca) and the RIAA (Record­ing Indus­try Asso­ci­a­tion of Amer­i­ca) have been treat­ing their own mem­ber media con­glom­er­ates’ cus­tomers like crim­i­nals, impos­ing dig­i­tal restric­tions man­age­ment on con­tent, slap­ping intim­i­dat­ing warn­ings on discs and try­ing to stamp out online file shar­ing by fil­ing an end­less series of law­suits (even man­ag­ing to tar­get fam­i­lies with­out com­put­ers). These mea­sures have utter­ly failed to stamp out online copy­right infringement.

SOPA and PIPA would not improve mat­ters. Legit­i­mate speech on the Net would be sti­fled and legit­i­mate com­merce on the Net would be under­mined, while those deter­mined to share movies, books, music, or soft­ware would each oth­er would con­tin­ue to do so through dark­nets or oth­er means of shar­ing not yet invented.

We firm­ly believe that SOPA and PIPA are too fatal­ly flawed to be fixed. Dar­rell Issa and Ron Wyden’s OPEN Act (which is total­ly dif­fer­ent leg­is­la­tion) is worth a look, but Dodd, speak­ing on behalf of his trade group, has already tak­en pot shots at their pro­pos­al and made it clear he’s not interested.

It’s evi­dent­ly his way or the highway.

That kind of atti­tude isn’t going to get Dodd what we he wants. We will con­tin­ue to vig­or­ous­ly oppose this leg­is­la­tion in coop­er­a­tion with our many friends and allies in the Inter­net com­mu­ni­ty. And work­ing togeth­er, we’ll pre­vail and pro­tect the most demo­c­ra­t­ic medi­um for com­mu­ni­ca­tion ever invented.