Lawmakers Try To Keep Anti-Piracy Bills On Track
(01-19) 15:30 PST WASHINGTON (AP) --
Five days before a critical vote, senators are abandoning an anti-piracy bill they had supported after an outpouring of online opposition to tinkering with Internet freedoms.
Senate Democratic leaders still plan to vote next Tuesday on taking up the Protect International Property Act and supporters were scrambling to make changes before then to answer some of the critics, but it was questionable whether they had the 60 votes needed.
Half-a-dozen of the 40 original co-sponsors of what is known as the PIPA bill withdrew their support Wednesday amid a one-day protest blackout by Wikipedia and other Web giants and a flood of emails to Capitol Hill offices that at times doubled normal volumes.
When more than 7 million sign a petition on Google saying the Senate bill and its counterpart in the House would censor the Web and impose burdensome regulations on U.S. businesses, lawmakers listen.
Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2012/01/19/national/w121950S79.DTL#ixzz1jxB7jOnY
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