JONATHAN ALLEN, JENNIFER MARTINEZ and ANNA PALMER
Politico
January 18, 2012
Controversial anti-piracy legislation, already on life support in the House, is now in serious doubt in the Senate, where the confluence of a Republican rump rebellion, White House concerns and a Wednesday blackout by Wikipedia, Mozilla and other big-name websites is enough to give some senators second thoughts.
Republican Sen. Scott Brown, locked in a re-election fight with Elizabeth Warren in Democratic-leaning Massachusetts, announced on Twitter on Tuesday that he’d vote against the Senate’s PROTECT IP Act and the House’s Stop Online Piracy Act. Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.), a PIPA co-sponsor, now opposes the bill as written, and sources involved in the fight say they expect more lawmakers to drop their support for the measures backed by Hollywood but opposed by Silicon Valley.
It all amounts to this: Congress woke the sleeping tech giant, and now lawmakers are desperate to pacify it.
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