Breaking: PIPA Senate Vote Postponed
PIPA might soon perish.
The Senate planned to vote on highly polemic PIPA on Tuesday, but Majority Leader Harry Reid just announced that he would postpone action on the anti-piracy bill, according to the Wall Street Journal.
And if the downward spiral recent trajectory of the bill is any indication, the outlook is not good for the act.
Reid (D-Nev.) told reporters that "recent events" had prompted his decision -- but did not elaborate.
Runnin' Scared has a few guesses about what these "events" might be.
There was that whole internet blackout thing, when tens of thousands of websites -- including Wikipedia -- went dark Wednesday to protest the House's Stop Internet Piracy Act and the Senate sister bill PIPA, the Protect Intellectual Property Act.
Opponents say that SOPA and PIPA threaten free speech, and basically let the government control the web. Since the mass demonstration, which attracted countless more individual web users, SOPA and PIPA have been shedding boosters. ProPublica recently put the count at 63 congressmen supporting the acts, with 122 now opposing them.
Reid says that he wants to reach a compromise and fix the wording of the proposed law, the Journal notes. He thinks that IP legislations are necessary to combat conterfeiting and piracy, which "cost the American economy billions of dollars and thousands of jobs per year."
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