Yesterday’s Online Protests Have Made 18 Senators To Drop Their Support For PIPA

The day of internet protests is over now, but now without any consequences. SOPA and PIPA are now being questioned by several former co-sponsors and new senators as well, who are all saying that these bills are wrong in their current form therefore they will all receive a negative vote when it will be the case.

Shortly after Wikipedia, Reddit, Craigslist, Google, and others have begun protesting against SOPA and PIPA, the phone lines of the senators got very hot. Lots of them have decided to stick to their opinion, however, 13 of them have immediately reacted to the people’s wishes. Now, at least 18 of them have decided to join the “Stop SOPA and PIPA” party even though 7 of them were co-sponsors to one of these bills.

Although Lamar Smith has announced that the SOPA markup will resume in February, there is no denying in the fact that the Stop Online Piracy Act and the Protect IP Act have received some serious blows after the protests that took place on January 18th.

Prior to the protests, there were 16 Republican and 23 Democratic PIPA supporters – if 18 of them have decided that the bill is wrong in its current form then the Protect IP Act has only 21 supporters. Many believe that most of these reps will eventually drop their support as well, at least until they will come up with a new way of stopping online piracy and protecting the companies which have invested in their IP.

The new bills are supposed to keep the freedom of the internet in place and not to censor any website, but it’s very likely that many internet users and websites are not going to agree with them therefore we should expect further protests in the near future.

A senator even said that it would be better for the US to promote a bill that could have huge implications on the free and open internet. For a country which promotes “freedom” in general, a legislation that censors the internet fall in contradiction with what the United States believes in and SOPA as well as PIPA should have been scrapped by now.

Most reps agreed on the fact that PIPA is “flawed” and that they will have to work harder to meet the demands of the people who elected them.

The list of newly found PIPA opponents can be found below:

  • John Boozman;

  • Ben Cardin;

  • Jim DeMint;

  • James Inhofe;

  • Jeff Merkley;

  • Marco Rubio;

  • David Vitter;

  • Pat Toomney;

  • Kelly Ayotte;

  • Roy Blunt;

  • Mike Johanns;

  • Olympia Snowe;

  • Scott Brown;

  • Tom Coburn;

  • John Cornyn;

  • Orrin Hatch;

  • Mark Kirk;

  • Lisa Murkowski.

If voting on SOPA and PIPA would have begun two days ago and the White House wouldn’t have had anything to say, then these two bills would have been adopted in theВ Constitution. Now that the two laws have more opponents, it’s going to be a very close call. The good thing is that the Obama Administration officially announced that “in its current form, SOPA will not pass.” Sadly, this doesn’t mean that these guys won’t be back.



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