senate

All four Republican presidential candidates today denounced a pair of controversial Hollywood-backed copyright bills, lending a sharp partisan edge to yesterday's protest against the legislation by Wikipedia, Google, and thousands of other Web sites.

The bills are "far too intrusive, far too expensive, far too threatening (to) the freedom of speech and movement of information across the Internet," former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney said during tonight's CNN debate in South Carolina.

Romney's rivals offered similar criticisms of the Senate measure, Protect IP--scheduled for a floor vote next week--and the House bill called the Stop Online Piracy Act, … Read more

Google's homepage today shows a thick black censorship stamp across its colorful logo.

And, if clicked on, it leads users to a "End Piracy, Not Liberty" petition that asks people to sign-on to protest the two anti-piracy laws to be voted on by Senate and Congress.

"Millions of Americans oppose SOPA and PIPA because these bills would censor the Internet and slow economic growth in the U.S.," the petition reads. "Sign this petition urging Congress to vote NO on PIPA and SOPA before it is too late."

Over the course of the … Read more

A widespread Internet protest against Hollywood-backed copyright legislation has knocked some U.S. Senate Web sites intermittently offline.

Around 11 a.m. PT today, the rush of visitors looking for ways to contact their members of Congress overwhelmed several Web pages of individual senators. As CNET reported this morning, some sponsors of the Protect IP and the Stop Online Piracy Act have switched sides as a result of the protest.

The amount of traffic "temporarily shut down our Web site," Sen. Ron Wyden, the leading opponent of the Protect IP Act, wrote on Twitter.

By noon PT, the … Read more

We've put it off long enough, and today we'll finally spend time discussing Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), an incendiary bill written by Texas Congressman Lamar Smith that would effectively put an end to any Web site that would "steal America's innovative and creative products, attract more than 53 billion visits a year, and threaten more than 19 million American jobs."… Read more

An unprecedented online protest against a Hollywood-backed copyright bill may be working: some of its previous supporters in the U.S. Congress are backing down.

The protest, which included a Wikipedia blackout and home page alerts at Google.com and Amazon.com, has prompted some senators contacted by CNET today to abandon their earlier enthusiasm for Protect IP and the Stop Online Piracy Act, or SOPA. A Senate floor vote on Protect IP is scheduled for January 24.

"I'm withdrawing my co-sponsorship for the Protect IP Act," said Sen. Roy Blunt, a Missouri Republican.

Sen. John Boozman, … Read more

When Rep. Lamar Smith announced the Stop Online Piracy Act in late October, he knew it was going to be controversial.

But the Texas Republican probably never anticipated the broad and fierce outcry from Internet users that SOPA provoked over the last few months. It was a show of public opposition to Internet-related legislation not seen since the 2003 political wrangling over implanting copy-protection technology in PCs, or perhaps even the blue ribbons appearing on Web sites in the mid-1990s in response to the Communications Decency Act.

Consider the concerted protest on January 18 by high-profile Web companies and organizations. … Read more

All across Twitter these days, you can find people who are standing up to the bipartisan Congressional coalition behind the Stop Online Piracy Act. But one news site is taking its protest a whole lot further than simply plastering a "STOP SOPA" banner across its Twitter profile picture.

Reddit, a popular news aggregator, said today that it will be "blacking out" its entire site for 12 hours on January 18.

"The freedom, innovation, and economic opportunity that the Internet enables is in jeopardy," Reddit's editors posted this afternoon. "Congress is considering legislation … Read more

An effort on Capitol Hill to overturn the federal government's controversial Net neutrality regulations failed today.

By a 46-52 vote, the U.S. Senate rejected a Republican-backed proposal that would have lifted the regulations before they take effect on November 20.

This morning's vote was an anticlimactic affair. A veto threat two days earlier from President Obama, coupled with evidence that there was nowhere near a two-thirds supermajority in both chambers, meant that the repeal effort would fail.

The Federal Communications Commission adopted the regulations by a 3-2 party line vote last December. Once they take effect, broadband … Read more

Following a debate along party lines on Net neutrality today, the Senate will vote tomorrow on whether to repeal a Federal Communications Commission rule banning fixed-line broadband providers from blocking Web sites or unreasonably discriminating against them.

Democrats argue that Net neutrality rules are necessary to make sure that telcos treat Web sites and content providers equally, regardless of the type of data being transmitted, and to ensure that they do not give preferential treatment to those who pay more.

Republicans oppose the rules the FCC adopted by a 3-2 party line vote last December, arguing that the FCC lacked … Read more