United Liberty

While former Sen. Chris Dodd (D-CT) and other supporters of SOPA and PIPA have lashed out at companies and websites that participated in yesterday’s “blackout,” it certainly seems as though opponents of the two bills carried the day:

Members of the Senate are rushing for the exits in the wake of the Internet’s unprecedented protest of the Protect IP Act (PIPA). At least 13 members of the upper chamber announced their opposition on Wednesday. In a particularly severe blow from Hollywood, at least five of the newly-opposed Senators were previously sponsors of the Protect IP Act.

The newly-opposed Senators are skewed strongly to the Republican side of the aisle. An Ars Technica survey of Senators’ positions on PIPA turned up only two Democrats, Ben Cardin (D-MD) and Jeff Merkley (D-OR), who announced their opposition on Wednesday. The other 11 Senators who announced their opposition on Wednesday were all Republicans. These 13 join a handful of others, including Jerry Moran (R-KS), Rand Paul (R-KY), Mark Warner (D-VA), and Ron Wyden (D-OR), who have already announced their opposition.

Marco Rubio, a freshman Republican Senator from Florida who some consider to be a rising star, withdrew his sponsorship of the bill, citing “legitimate concerns about the impact the bill could have on access to the Internet and about a potentially unreasonable expansion of the federal government’s power to impact the Internet.” He urged the Senate to “avoid rushing through a bill that could have many unintended consequences.”

Another co-sponsor, Sen. Roy Blunt (R-MO) echoed that sentiment. He blamed Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) for “pushing forward w/ a flawed bill that still needs much work.”

Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT), one of the chamber’s longest-serving members and another sponsor, described the Protect IP Act as “simply not ready for prime time.”

The partisan slant of the defections is surprising because copyright has not traditionally been considered a partisan issue. Before Wednesday’s protests, PIPA had 16 Republican co-sponsors and 23 Democratic ones. The bill lost a quarter of its Republican sponsors on Wednesday, while we know of only one Democrat, Ben Cardin (D-MD), who dropped his support.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation reports that numbers from the day of protest throughout the Internet were very solid as “[m]ore than 1 million messages were sent to Congress” through the group and “[m]ore than 4.5 million people signed Google’s petition registering their opposition to the bills.”

In addition to the new found opposition from some members of the Senate, others joined the anti-censorship campaign, including Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, who expressed his opposition in a brief note and pointed to Facebook DC’s stance on Internet regulation.

All of this is good news, for sure. Of course, this doesn’t mean that SOPA and PIPA are dead. As noted yesterday, Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX), who is carrying the water of Hollywood with this bill, plans to push forward with a markup of the legislation next month in the House Judiciary Committee. Also, the sincerity of some of the Senators now opposed to the legislation should probably be questioned. Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT), for example, once called for an outright ban on peer-to-peer networks and has previously supported legislation that would censor the web. It just so happens that Hatch is being targeted by Tea Party and grassroots organizations, so he is taking a politically convenient position.

Again, we’re not out of the woods yet, but what action we did see yesterday is very encouraging. BUT NOW IS NOT THE TIME TO LET UP. Keep calling the representatives of your state and ask them to oppose legislation that would fundamentally change the Internet by promoting government censorship of speech and discouraging innovation.