Why can’t they just hire a lobbyist like everyone else?

– an unnamed aid to the House Judiciary Committee, complaining that hackers published personal information about a Committee staffer (among others including media chiefs) in a bid to derail the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA).

This is one of the most telling political statements in quite some time. People without the financial to wherewithal to hire lobbyists and make large campaign contributions are invisible to Congress.  The only way to get action from Congress is with cash.

Meanwhile Lamar Smith (and Patrick Leahy in the Senate with respect to PIPA) say they plan to drop one of the worst provisions of SOPA from the bills which currently require that the DNS system be placed at great risk to block alleged pirate sites based exclusively on governmental claims but without trial. But that could be added back at any time.

… the lawmakers appear to have conceded to opposition from security experts who say the plan would sabotage U.S. government-approved efforts to secure DNS against hackers and break the internet’s unified naming system by introducing lies into infrastructure.

“After consultation with industry groups across the country, I feel we should remove Domain Name System blocking from the Stop Online Piracy Act so that the committee can further examine the issues surrounding this provision. We will continue to look for ways to ensure that foreign websites cannot sell and distribute illegal content to U.S. consumers,” Smith said in a statement.

It was not immediately clear whether Smith would also remove the requirement that, if an ISP decided not to redirect, it must employ other censoring methods as outlined in the bill such as IP address filtering to prevent American citizens from visiting sites the attorney general maintains are dedicated to infringing activities.

Update: It appears that there will be a significant delay in attempts to enact SOPA and PROTECT-IP.  However, it is important to keep up pressure on your Congressional representatives to avoid back-sliding.  And there is more from Ars Technica.

Related articles

• SOPA drops hot-button provision (variety.com)
• Rep. Lamar Smith Says He Will Remove Controversial SOPA Item (paidcontent.org)
• DNS provision pulled from SOPA, victory for opponents (zdnet.com)
• Congressional staffers behind SOPA get shiny new jobs as entertainment industry lobbyists (boingboing.net)
• Senate Judiciary Republicans Call For Delay On Anti-Piracy Vote (techdailydose.nationaljournal.com)