“We have increasingly heard from a large number of constituents and stakeholders with vocal concerns about possible unintended consequences of the proposed legislation,” the six wrote. They included Sen. Charles E. Grassley (Iowa), the ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee.
In the back offices of the Senate, many longtime aides were amazed at how quickly a new lobbying force had managed to outmaneuver experienced heavyweights. Sites such as Wikipedia and Tumblr had encouraged users to contact legislators, resulting in a flood of unhappy calls.
One Republican aide said that “SOPA” had already become “a dirty word beyond anything you can imagine.”
Both of the bills would allow the Justice Department to seek an injunction in court, barring U.S. sites from processing payments for a rogue Web site, selling it ads or listing its link among search-engine results.
“There’s no fundamental First Amendment right to engage in thievery. Nor to advertise thievery,” said Howard Gantman, at the Motion Picture Association of America. He said that the Internet’s free-for-all nature should not allow U.S. companies impunity to deal with crooks.
“Do we want to have laws?” Gantman said. “Or do we want to just say it’s a free-for-all Wild West?”
In addition to the costs, however, the tech companies say they would have to police vast sites full of user-generated content. They also objected to a provision that would have stripped the rogue sites out of the Internet’s virtual phone book. If a U.S. user entered the Web address, it would appear the site didn’t exist.
That provision “says that we’re no longer committed to the idea that there’s one Web. We’re no longer committed to the idea that any one person, anywhere in the world, can reach any one site anywhere else in the world,” said Sherwin Siy, of the nonprofit advocacy group Public Knowledge.
Over the weekend, the tech companies won a major victory. White House officials signaled concerns about the phone-book provision. The bill’s sponsors had already said they would remove it.
But several companies say they still have significant problems with the bill. They say the bill spreads culpability too widely and could leave Web sites facing expensive legal fights for a single link to a site deemed to be “rogue.”
Instead, many companies have proposed an approach in which the Web sites could police themselves, overseen by an international nonprofit that tracks bad actors.
“This is an industry where you can start with a laptop and a good idea and make a billion-dollar company,” said Alexis Ohanian, the co-founder of Reddit.com. Ohanian said that if the new bill adds potential legal liabilities, the result could be less innovation on the Web.
Staff writers Paul Kane, Cecilia Kang, David Nakamura and Hayley Tsukayama contributed to this report.
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