Rent-to-own News - Web Piracy Bill faces opponents

Supporters of controversial antipiracy legislation face a struggle to regain momentum after the White House sided with irate Internet companies and users over the weekend and complained that the proposal could hurt innocent companies and undermine cybersecurity.

On Saturday, the White House outlined its opposition to two similar bills pending in the House and Senate that would crack down on the sale of pirated American movies, music and other goods on foreign-based websites. The bills would require Internet companies to hobble access to foreign pirate websites, bar search engines from linking to them and prevent U.S. companies from placing ads on them, according to a Wall Street Journal report.

The Obama administration's opposition to the legislation represents a new hurdle for the Hollywood studios and other supporters, who complain that they lose billions of dollars each year as a result of pirated movies or other goods.

Lawmakers appeared to be on the verge of easily passing piracy legislation by a wide margin, but the prognosis for the measure is now uncertain.

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Lamar Smith, seen in 2010, says he is committed to a bipartisan bill.
The Senate is still scheduled to hold a procedural vote on the legislation on Jan. 24. House backers haven't announced any plans to advance the legislation, but they said Friday that they will remove a provision that worried some cybersecurity experts.

The proposed Stop Online Piracy Act has stoked wild rhetoric from both supporters and detractors. Opponents, including technology companies, have compared some provisions in the legislation to methods used by dictatorial regimes.

Supporters of antipiracy legislation face a struggle to regain momentum after the White House sided with irate Internet companies and users, Peter Landers reports on digits.

To protest the proposed legislation, the online encyclopedia Wikipedia said it will close down its English language version for 24 hours on Wednesday.

But supporters say the competitiveness of the movie and television industry—and even that of American business as a whole—is at stake.

Major media companies that own TV channels and movie studios have been among the legislation's supporters. They worry that piracy could thwart their still nascent efforts to get consumers to pay for online content. In the TV business, for instance, channels are increasingly making their shows available online only to paying subscribers to cable and satellite operators—a system that could be undermined by pirate sites.

Google, Twitter, Facebook Inc. and other Internet companies worry the legislation is written so broadly that it will impose new liabilities on domestic websites that aren't profiting from pirated material. The legislation would give the Justice Department authority to seek court orders to block domain names or search results for sites that are alleged to host pirate content. Opponents worry that innocent sites that host user-generated materials could get shut down.