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CEA Joins Protest Over Pending Web Piracy Bills

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.’ “

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