The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) found its way into the...
The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) found its way into the Senate campaign of Internet service provider pioneer Pete Ashdown, who mounted a longshot campaign against intellectual property hawk Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, in 2006. Ashdown, who announced in November…
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he’s again seeking the Democratic Party nomination for Hatch’s Senate seat, said on his blog Friday that SOPA (HR-3261) “represents another case of congressional ignorance of technology.” Congress “continued to carry water for media companies” who want to “shut down any website without proper trial of criminality,” he said, echoing criticism from some lawmakers that a House Judiciary Committee hearing on SOPA (WID Nov 17 p1) was “stacked” against SOPA critics. Ashdown gave credit to his fellow Utahn, House Judiciary member and Republican Rep. Jason Chaffetz, who “saw through these tactics” and opposed the bill. Chaffetz is a cosponsor of the SOPA alternative known as the OPEN Act, whose House version is still in draft form, which would give the U.S. International Trade Commission authority to hear cases against alleged infringing websites. The Senate version of the OPEN Act (S-2029) was introduced by Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore. SOPA went through two days of markup in December, but fewer than half the amendments to the bill were considered before the House went into recess (WID Dec 19 p1). The earliest it could be taken up again is Jan. 17. Ashdown, founder of Utah’s oldest ISP, XMission, said in the blog post (http://xrl.us/bmnyad) he would hold a volunteer coordination meeting Jan. 14 in Salt Lake City. In his 2006 challenge to Hatch, Ashdown complained that his technophile peers were “more talk than walk” in supporting his candidacy against the cash-rich Hatch (WID Sept 25/06 p1), whose onetime suggestion that record labels be allowed to remotely destroy suspected file-sharers’ hard drives earned him notoriety among the tech community.