House Washes Theirs Hands Of SOPA

The U.S. House of Representatives put a freeze on SOPA legislation today, as Representative Eric Cantor of Virginia (R) announces he’ll take no further action on the bill. Although a somewhat unexpected move, perhaps it’s unsurprising considering the amount of negative press the controversial legislation has received and the fact that the White House stated it “would not support legislation that reduces freedom of expression, increases cybersecurity risk or undermines the dynamic, innovative global internet.”

Unfortunately, the sister bill, PIPA (otherwise known with the much longer name of Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property Act of 2011), is still under consideration, with over forty co-sponsors in the Senate. PIPA, while less widely known than SOPA, includes the same provisions for DNS blocking and website censorship. Basically, this amounts to a step in the right direction, but we’ve not reached the end of this battle yet. Senator Lamar Smith, SOPA’s creator, vows to continue hunting for ways to shut down foreign websites, and both SOPA and PIPA supporters are doing their best to spin this news as a victory.