CEA Joins Protest Over Pending Web Piracy Bills

By Steve Smith -- TWICE, 1/18/2012

Arlington, Va. - The Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) is joining several other major websites and closing for the day to protest the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in the House, the PROTECT IP Act (PIPA) in the Senate.

The CEA is backing the proposed bicameral Online Protection and Enforcement of Digital Trade (OPEN) Act.

Among the major websites that are reportedly closing for the day, closing for part of the day, or protesting the acts are the English language Wikipedia site, Google, YouTube and others.

CEA's websites, CE.org and Declareinnovation.com, are also going dark today.

Gary Shapiro, president/CEO of the CEA, said that his group and other opponents of the pending legislation ask "that the bill not be brought to the Senate floor until there has been a hearing, and until serious concerns about private rights of action, search, overly inclusive definitions, third-party liability and other issues have been resolved."

CEA and many others are complaining that the PIPA bill will be brought to the Senate floor on Jan. 24, even though there is concern in both houses of Congress and the White House that the legislation still needs work.

Shapiro noted in a prepared statement, "It is increasingly clear that bills causing collateral damage to innovation in the guise of fighting piracy are not politically viable. Now that unreasonable solutions to piracy have been shown not to work, it is time to explore reasonable ones. We urge policymakers to join CEA in support of the OPEN Act - a bicameral, bipartisan and narrowly targeted approach to fighting foreign ‘rogue websites.' "