ReadWriteWeb

Last December, an anti-child pornography bill co-authored by House Judiciary Committee Chairman Lamar Smith (R - Texas) and Democratic National Committee Chair Debbie Wasserman-Schultz (D - Fla.) passed the markup phase and was referred to the House floor. Though the bill's chief provision is to enable law enforcement authorities to arrest and prosecute entities that knowingly provide financial transaction services to child pornographers, the bill would also require Internet service providers to maintain records of the IP addresses they lease to their customers, for no less than 12 months (18 as originally drafted).

In the wake of the historic failure in the House of the Stop Online Piracy Act, which was co-authored by Rep. Smith and sponsored by Rep. Wasserman-Schultz, a newly empowered, and enlarged, wave of protesters aims to stop any bill that would leverage popular sentiment to force ISPs to retain customer data for use by government.

One of the co-authors of the Protect IP Act (PIPA) in the U.S. Senate has said that he will make a manager's amendment to the bill to strike out the section where Internet Service Providers will be required to block a foreign website found to be infringing on copyrighted content. The bill's sponsor, Sen. Patrick Leahy (D - Vt.), said yesterday that the DNS blocking portion of the bill may be stricken before it comes to a vote on the Senate floor Jan. 24. While this could be a big win for SOPA/PIPA opponents, there is still plenty in the bill that is detrimental to the Internet ecosystem.

In a statement from his office Thursday evening, Sen. Patrick Leahy (D - Vt.), who co-authored the current version of the PROTECT-IP bill (also known as PIPA) along with Sen. Orrin Hatch (R - Utah), said he is now willing to set aside the most controversial aspect of the anti-piracy legislation currently under discussion. Sen. Leahy now says that the provision that would empower courts to order service providers to block access to foreign sites under investigation for suspected illicit trafficking, should be set aside for further study.

Leahy credits his Vermont constituents for giving him insight into the issue, as well as service providers, whom he admits stand in opposition to the provision.

The what-if scenario few in the tech world want to consider - What happens if the Stop Online Piracy Act passes into law? - may be fixed by something as simple as a browser extension.

Forbes and the Atlantic Monthly are both reporting that coders are already developing work-arounds. A developer calling himself Tamer Rizk launched DeSopa, a Firefox add-on that would allow users to visit sites blocked by the proposed copyright protection measures proposed under SOPA.

What keeps Internet service providers from being responsible for, and perhaps prosecuted for, the content trafficked over their networks is a provision of a law that Web advocates ironically opposed while it was being argued in 1998: the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. As long as ISPs do not take interest in the nature or technical breakdown of that content, then its creators and publishers can't hold them liable for intellectual property theft - this is the "safe harbor" provision.

That law isn't going away any time soon. Meanwhile, the recording and publishing industries - stymied by the ineffectiveness of prosecuting individual IP violators - know that the ISP is the one remaining place where they can attack the problem of IP theft. (Certainly they can't prosecute themselves and their own partners for ineffective security.)

Populism is a tool that only works in one's defense when one does not appear big or strong enough to wield it by himself. In its rise to fame, Google has been a champion of populist causes, most notably the association of freedom of ideas with freedom in licensing. Up until recently, the company has been adept in utilizing populism to its advantage, including distinguishing itself against Microsoft, and encouraging others to rally around its relative degree of openness with respect to Android, video codecs such as VP8, and HTML5.

But there's a reason the phrase "populist giant" does not appear much in politics, or in technology which has in many ways become the successor to politics in the public mind. Last month, the U.S. Senate had an opportunity to remove the populist veil from Google CEO Eric Schmidt, for whom it clearly no longer fits.

A bill proposed in Congress last week sponsored by Representatives Lee Terry and Edolphis Towns aims to amend the Communications Act of 1934 to allow "informational calls to mobile telephones and for other purposes." Basically, it is a bill that would allow robo-calls from marketers and political campaigns (among other entities) to mobile phones.

Marketers and campaigns still crave phone numbers as the number one target of consumer information. It is not your email address, Twitter handle or Facebook profile. The baseline information for marketers continues to be your phone number and your physical address. That is the closest they can get to you, your mailbox and landline phone. This bill would bring them even closer - straight into your pocket.

"Mr. Schmidt, industry stats show that Google runs between 65 and 70% of all Internet searches in the U.S. done on computers and about 95% on mobile devices, and has 75% of all search advertising revenue in the United States," recited Sen. Antitrust Subcommittee Chairman Herb Kohl (D - Wisc.) "Under the common antitrust standards, this kind of a market share is considered to constitute monopoly power. Does Google recognize that as a monopolist or a dominant power? Special rules apply that there is conduct that must be taken and conduct that must be refrained from."

At that moment, the magnitude of the weight of the Google chairman's devious plan, all the millions of little wrongs committed every second against everyday mothers and fathers just trying to earn a living, impacted him like a meteor streaking from the sky. Sen. Kohl's prophetic words, as though carved on the Halls of Justice itself, rang a new chord in Eric Schmidt's heart, which grew three sizes in that very instant. "My lord," the chairman found himself saying, "what have I done? What a monstrous machine have I set forth upon this Earth? Yes... yes, Senator, I do believe! Special rules do apply, and there is conduct that must be refrained from! And to the end of my life, by the sword Excalibur, I shall make this my mission!"

The message from Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt, appearing before the Senate Antitrust Subcommittee, will be familiar to anyone who's heard Schmidt speak before. But it began this time with a shot across the bow at a certain unnamed competitor, which he acknowleged pioneered technology and had been synonymous with the development process (as though that were past tense).

Schmidt told senators, "That company lost sight of what mattered," and as a result had to come under Justice Dept. oversight. Without naming Microsoft, Schmidt clearly placed Google as Microsoft's successor, not only in terms of Americans' collective mindset, but in terms of the government scrutiny it finds itself under today. Schmidt is evidently hoping that any comparison between Google and Microsoft will automatically render Google the superior organization.

Yesterday, the U.S. Senate passed the House's version of the latest patent reform bill, H.R. 1249, the America Invents Act, by a vote of 89 to 9. During a speech to Congress yesterday, Pres. Obama praised the Senate for that action, and vowed to sign the bill. When he does, America's patent system will shift to a standard used by much of the rest of the world: a "first-to-file" system intended to ease some of the burden on inventors to prove originality.

Also remaining in the final bill is a vastly expanded post-grant review system designed to move the process of challenging a patent's legitimacy from litigation to administration - from the courtroom to a larger, more funded U.S. Patent Office that will include a new agency called the Patent Trial and Appeal Board. But missing from the bill is the thing that launched it in the first place: an initiative to replace the system of determining damages and, in so doing, reduce the amount of huge jury awards.