US SOPA anti-piracy plans continue to lose support

The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) continued to lose support over the Christmas period with Nintendo, Electronic Arts (EA), Sony and Go Daddy all removing their names from the list of businesses backing the controversial anti-piracy legislation.

The US House Judiciary Committee is due to vote shortly on SOPA, which will authorise courts to order ISPs, search companies and advertising services to take action against copyright-infringing web sites.

Congress pushed back the vote to January after it was first scheduled for mid-December.

In the meantime, Sony was threatened with a "Death Warrant" via YouTube by hacking group Anonymous for supporting the legislation while Go Daddy found its support for the bill was losing it customers.

"Go Daddy opposes SOPA because the legislation has not fulfilled its basic requirement to build a consensus among stake-holders in the technology and internet communities," said chief executive Warren Adelman in a statement.

"Our company regrets the loss of any of our customers, who remain our highest priority, and we hope to repair those relationships and win back their business over time."

However, while the US Congressional list of SOPA supporters is looking shorter than a month ago, many of the businesses that say they have dropped support are actually still backing it through their membership of the Entertainment Software Association (ESA). The ESA boasts EA, Nintendo and Sony as members.

If SOPA is passed by the US government, ISPs will be required to modify servers to return empty responses for copyright-infringing sites, while search firms would have to filter results and advertising services would be obliged to take revenue away from the site operators.

US hosting companies and publishing platforms like Rackspace, WordPress and Blogger, are also likely to have to comply with the legislation, meaning that companies using their services could also be affected, wherever their location.

In November, the Business Software Alliance (BSA) withdrew its support for SOPA after originally commending the US government for drawing up plans to combat software piracy and copyright-infringing web sites.

Now the organisation says the plans need more balance and should contain clearer legal definitions regarding the kinds of site SOPA will target.

A large number of technology firms and human rights organisations have called on the US government to stop the SOPA plans.