Jan. 19 (Bloomberg) -- An online protest led by Google Inc. and Facebook Inc. against U.S. anti-piracy bills illustrates how Internet companies are changing legislative debate in Washington.
Nine co-sponsors, five in the Senate and four House members, began withdrawing their support for Hollywood-backed measures to combat piracy. Internet companies devoted home pages yesterday to opposing the bills, threatening a traditional lobbying effort led by the Motion Picture Association of America that assembled bipartisan support for the legislation.
The movie and music industries want Google and online services to block non-U.S. websites that peddle pirated movies and counterfeit goods, while Internet companies say the bills would promote censorship, disrupt the Web’s architecture and harm their ability to innovate.
“It’s unprecedented,” Jonathan Zittrain, a Harvard University professor of law and computer science who serves on the boards of bill opponents Electronic Frontier Foundation and Internet Society, said in an interview. “You could see some members of Congress saying there’s no percentage in it for me to stick out my neck on something like this.”
The anti-piracy bills call for the U.S. Justice Department to seek court orders forcing Internet-service providers, search engines, payment processors and online ad networks to block or stop doing business with non-U.S. sites linked to piracy. The measures would let private copyright holders seek court orders forcing payment and ad companies to cut off such websites.
Changing Political Process
A promise by lead sponsors of the bills to drop the requirement for service providers to block websites, after opponents said it may harm the Web’s domain-name system, failed to stop Internet companies from protesting.
“These organizations have reinvented a lot of the ways we live, how we connect, how we absorb media,” said Rogan Kersh, an associate dean at New York University’s Wagner School who conducts research on lobbying. “They’re now trying to reinvent how we carry out democratic politics.”
Visitors to Google, the world’s most popular search engine, were greeted yesterday by a black box covering the company’s familiar icon, and a message that read “Tell Congress: Please don’t censor the Web!” The message linked to a page outlining Mountain View, California-based Google’s opposition and an option to join an online petition urging Congress to reject the legislation.
Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia run by a nonprofit organization where users contribute entries, shut the English language version of its website for 24 hours to protest the bills, displaying a blacked-out page that gave people contact information for their elected officials.
Congressional Sites Slowed
“We can’t let poorly thought out laws get in the way of the Internet’s development,” Facebook Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg said in a post on the social network yesterday. The message connects to a Facebook page outlining the company’s opposition to the bills, with a link for people to contact members of Congress.
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