Four key (Republican) senators abandon online piracy bills amid web protests

Google Protest at Google.com 

We are now up to four Republican Senators who have backed out of co-sponsoring the Senate IP Protect Act.  Looks like the on-line protest  is working by Google and others.  There doesn't seem to be any way that Senator Reid (D-NV) can get the 60 votes necessary to advance this bill.  Every Republican in the Senate who votes to advance this bill needs to think twice if they have an election coming up this fall.  Between Romney as the potential anointed candidate and Republican Senators who support this bill, conservatives who call the Republican Party are not happy and that home may be someplace else for the general election.

The Democrat controlled leadership of the Senate can demand a vote on this but they haven't passed a budget.  Their priorities are upside down on what is important as they bow down to some of their big donors in Hollywood.  

Four key senators abandon online piracy bills amid web protests
By Brendan Sasso and Gautham Nagesh - 01/18/12 02:56 PM ET 

Congressional support for controversial online piracy legislation eroded dramatically on Wednesay in the face of an unprecedented online protest supported by tech titans such as Google, Wikipedia and Facebook.  

Several key senators withdrew their support from the Senate's Protect IP Act, including Tea Party favorite Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.), an elected member of his party's leadership.  

Sen. Jon Cornyn (R-Texas), who leads the Senate GOP campaign team, said the legislation should be put on hold, while Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), a sponsor and the ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee, retreated from the bill.  

Thousands of websites went dark on Wednesday to protest the two Internet piracy bills, the House's Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Senate's Protect IP Act (PIPA). At least two California Democrats, Rep. Anna Eshoo and Zoe Lofgren, joined the protests by blacking out their web sites. 

Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.), a leader of Senate conservatives, also came out against the bills, calling them "misguided bills that will cause more harm than good." 

"When protecting intellectual property rights, we must not undermine free speech, threaten economic growth, or impose burdensome regulations," DeMint tweeted. 

Opposition is also building in the House. Two of the original Republican co-sponsors of SOPA, Ben Quayle (Ariz.) and Lee Terry (Neb.), withdrew their support Tuesday before the protests began, and scores of other lawmakers took to Twitter Wednesday to affirm their opposition.
The coordinated online protests are aimed at bringing down legislation that would empower the Justice Department and copyright holders to demand that search engines delete links to sites deemed to be “dedicated” to copyright infringement. Ad networks and payment processors would be prohibited from doing business with the sites. 

Where the protests left the legislation, which is supported by the Motion Picture Association of America and recording industry, among other groups, is unclear. The Senate is scheduled to hold a procedural vote on the legislation next week, but it is uncertain whether the 60 votes to move forward can be found. The fight over the bills has broken across party lines, with House Oversight and Government Reform Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) leading opposition in the House against Rep. Lamarr Smith (R-Texas), the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee. 

Hundreds of millions of Internet users, most of whom may have been unaware of the bills until Wednesday, are likely to have noticed the protests.  

Google, the most visited site in the world, plastered a black box evoking censorship over its logo and claimed the bills would "censor the Web and impose harmful regulations on American businesses." Users who click on the black box are re-directed to a petition urging Congress to drop the piracy legislation on a page.   

Excerpt:  Read More at The Hill

Time for more Republicans who are co-sponsoring these two bills in both Houses to stand up and withdraw their sponsorship and support.  It is bad enough when Democrats want to do this but to have Republicans get on board is absolutely disgusting and they also should be sent to the unemployment line.