After a marathon mark-up session last Thursday, the U.S. House of Representatives has postponed today’s hearing on the controversial Stop Online Piracy Act.
The House Judiciary committee in charge of preparing the act for a full vote has pushed the next hearing until early next year, reported Computer World.
The bill ostensibly aims to help enforce copyright online and is backed by Hollywood studios and music labels. But critics say its provisions would violate due process, censor free speech, and tamper with the technical underpinnings of the Internet. Many social communities, most notably Reddit, Tumblr, and Twitter have staged their own form of protests against the controversial bill.
Thus far about 20 amendments to the bill have been shot down, including one from Rep. Jared Polis (D-Colo.) that “would have barred the Department of Justice from using the new tactics envisioned by an anti-piracy bill to protect ‘obscene and pornographic works,’” reported the Huffington Post.
The 9-to-18 vote against the amendment came from some of the more conservative committee members, including Judiciary Chairman Lamar Smith (R-Texas) and Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa), and essentially protects the porn industry from having its content stolen.
Representatives who voted against the amendment claim that by “enforcing the intellectual property rights of porn producers, King’s office argued, the DOJ would be able to take down many websites that post porn illegally,” reported the Huffington Post. Opponents of the amendment also believe that “denying intellectual property rights to porn producers would conceivably result in even more porn flooding the Internet,” reported International Business Times.
The House support comes after three porn websites—Youporn, Pornhub and Tube8—have taken up the cause against SOPA with banners on their sites encouraging people to visit the American Censorship website.
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