Yesterday had some impact, but these bills are still very much on track to become law. All the post mortems today aren't communicating that very well.
The closure vote in the Senate on the 24th needs at least 41 no votes to prevent the bill from moving into markup. While more senators have announced opposition or doubt, current headcounts put "no" votes on closure only in the single digits.
Unlike subcommittee hearings, the markup hearings are closed door and allow the Senate to draft a final version of the bill without public scrutiny or testimony from tech leaders. If this legislation follows suite with other controversial legislation, the bill that emerges will have enough back room deals attached to let both the latecomer opposition and the White House to declare the bill a healthy compromise irregardless of the facts.
People need to be on the phone to their senators. Urge them to vote no on closure so that the inevitable compromise bill can be debated in public with input of experts.
Additionally, the lobbying groups aren't about to stop lobbying suddenly. It just means that they need to try harder. I wouldn't be shocked in the least to find some well funded senator trying to slide some of the language from this bill into a "must pass" 10,000 page budget bill.
What's scary enough is that some of this will get through in some way or another eventually.
So perhaps the best way to appease the lobbying companies would be to pass SOPA, but remove the most destructive pieces first. Perhaps narrowing the definition of an infringing or "rogue" site would be a good start.
The closure vote in the Senate on the 24th needs at least 41 no votes to prevent the bill from moving into markup. While more senators have announced opposition or doubt, current headcounts put "no" votes on closure only in the single digits.
Unlike subcommittee hearings, the markup hearings are closed door and allow the Senate to draft a final version of the bill without public scrutiny or testimony from tech leaders. If this legislation follows suite with other controversial legislation, the bill that emerges will have enough back room deals attached to let both the latecomer opposition and the White House to declare the bill a healthy compromise irregardless of the facts.
People need to be on the phone to their senators. Urge them to vote no on closure so that the inevitable compromise bill can be debated in public with input of experts.