Google hits out at SOPA as web goes “dark”

Google and WordPress have added their weight to today’s anti-SOPA protest, as a US politician revealed the controversial anti-piracy legislation will be reviewed next month.

Google today “censored” its logo, blacking it out – apparently for US users only – to raise awareness of the controversial bill, which critics claim goes too far in efforts to battle piracy.

WordPress’ main site also criticises the Stop Online Piracy Act, encouraging visitors to complain to their local politicians and offering a plugin to help its users blackout their own blogs.

Those sites’ action comes as part of a wider protest against the act, and its sibling the Protect IP Act (PIPA), with Wikipedia taking its English site offline for the day and many others following suit.

Due to the Republican and Democratic retreats taking place over the next two weeks, markup of the Stop Online Piracy Act is expected to resume in February

The protest has continued despite the White House pulling support for the proposed legislation, and that appears to have been a wise decision.

Lamar Smith, the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, said Congress will continue working on the bill in February, although he already announced the removal of one of the more controversial provisions, DNS blocking.

“Due to the Republican and Democratic retreats taking place over the next two weeks, markup of the Stop Online Piracy Act is expected to resume in February,” Smith said. “I am committed to continuing to work with my colleagues in the House and Senate to send a bipartisan bill to the White House that saves American jobs and protects intellectual property.”

The Senate, meanwhile, will vote on PIPA next week.

Anti-piracy “collateral damage”

Google’s chief legal officer David Drummond stressed that although his firm opposes SOPA, it still believes fighting piracy is “extremely important” – but says methods need to be found that don’t “cause collateral damage to the web”.

“We are investing a lot of time and money in that fight,” he said in a post on the Google blog. “Last year alone we acted on copyright takedown notices for more than five million webpages and invested more than $60 million in the fight against ads appearing on bad sites.”

“And we think there is more that can be done here — like targeted and focused steps to cut off the money supply to foreign pirate sites,” he added. “If you cut off the money flow, you cut the incentive to steal.”