Internet Censorship Bill Coming Up in Senate in Three Weeks

January 5, 2012

FireDogLake – Let’s define some terms here. The Internet censorship bills have different names depending on which chamber of Congress you’re talking about. The House bill is called SOPA, the Stop Online Piracy Act. That bill is currently in the committee process and has not yet cleared the Judiciary Committee. Observers thought this would happen at the end of last year, but House Judiciary Chairman Lamar Smith cancelled the conclusion of the markup at the last minute.

But in the Senate the Judiciary Committee has already cleared their version of the legislation known as PIPA, the Protect Intellectual Property Act. And what I didn’t realize until today is that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid filed for cloture on PIPA at the end of last year. So that will be the first item on the agenda in 2012. In fact, there’s already a date scheduled for the motion to proceed: January 24, at 2:15pm.

Sen. Ron Wyden already placed a hold on the bill objecting to moving it through by unanimous by unanimous consent, which is why there will be a cloture motion. Apparently holds are only honored with a delay in the vote when Republicans do them. Nevertheless, Wyden has at least three colleagues from both parties opposed to cloture – Jerry Moran, Maria Cantwell and Rand Paul. They will need a lot of help to block the 60 votes needed to clear cloture and get PIPA to the floor.

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