SOPA opponents cheer bill's demise

Consumer privacy and free speech groups are claiming victory following the mothballing of the controversial US Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA.)

US Senator Harry Reid on Friday announced that the Senate would be postponing its vote on the bill indefinitely, following weeks of public outcry and protests from both advocacy groups, as well as online publishers and application developers.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation, which has been a staunch opponent of the bill, claimed the decision marked a victory for end users.

"The misguided proponents of the disastrous internet blacklist bills have blinked," the foundation said.

"This is great news and it is a direct result of this week's mass protests. Together, we reminded the US Congress who it works for."

The effort to stop SOPA also received aid from an unlikely source. Security firms have come out in opposition to the law because the blocking requirements it places on service providers could threaten the DNSSEC platform.

Paul Ferguson, head of security research and threat intelligence at Trend Micro, told V3 that adopting an international arbitration system would be a far better system, from a security standpoint, than a blanket law enforced only in the US.

ISPs would not be able to secure the DNS infrastructure if they also had the be responsible for blocking domains and DNS, he said.

"We are much more supportive of taking things to an international arbitration level, rather than the US unilaterally forcing some technologically bumbling effort on local ISPs."

Not everyone was pleased with the decision, however. The Recording Industry Association of America chief executive Cary Sherman said the US Senate's decision was a missed opportunity to "bring the rule of law to the internet."

"There is a near universal consensus that cracking down on foreign rogue web sites is an important priority for the US government," Sherman said.

"The Senate had an opportunity to have a national conversation about an important and urgent issue; protecting American workers and consumers from foreign criminals."

Action against the proposed legislation also saw Wikipedia block access to its site for 24-hours and Google censor its home page logo in the US.