The author of the PROTECT IP Act, Senate Judiciary Committee...
The author of the PROTECT IP Act, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., expressed his regret that a cloture vote on the bill would not occur this week and continued to promote his legislation in a speech Monday on…
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the Senate floor. “I regret we will not go forward with it this week. I regret that so much misinformation has stopped it. … I hope after our delay we can come back together.” On Friday Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., postponed Tuesday’s cloture vote on the PROTECT IP Act, and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., agreed that lawmakers should “reconsider fast tracking” a bill that raised “serious legal, policy and operational concerns” (WID Jan 23 p1). Support for the antipiracy bill quickly eroded last week after Wikipedia, Craigslist, and thousands of other sites blacked out their home pages in a coordinated protest of PROTECT IP and its companion bill, the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) (WID Jan 19 p1). Following the protests at least seven of the bill’s original sponsors withdrew their support. Leahy said Monday that he has “remained flexible” on the issue. “I have listened to people both for and against the legislation, made changes in it along the lines as suggested by Senator [Ron] Wyden [D-Ore.]. I took seriously the concerns about the domain name provisions so we fixed that in the manager’s amendment,” he said. “At the end of the day, this debate boils down to a simple question. Should Americans and American companies profit from what they produce and be able to provide American jobs, or do we want to continue to let thieves operating overseas steal that property and sell it to unsuspecting American consumers? I hope that in the coming days the Senate will focus on stopping that theft that is undercutting our economic recovery. I remain committed to confronting this problem.”