By Gary Shapiro
It’s not every day that a Republican and a Democrat find common ground to solve a very real problem. But at this month’s International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) and Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) stood side-by-side to promote legislation that seeks to combat digital pirates — the ones who let you illegally download movies and songs. The two legislators were on hand at this cavalcade of innovation and progress to garner support from the technology community for their bill, the Online Protection and Enforcement of Digital Trade Act, or OPEN, which they officially introduced on Friday.
Given the reception they met, I think Messrs. Issa and Wyden succeeded. Since first proposing the OPEN Act last December, many of America’s largest Internet companies have registered their support, including eBay, Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, Twitter, Yahoo and Mozilla. This is the exact opposite reaction these very same companies had to Congress’s original legislation, the House’s Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Senate’s PROTECT IP Act (PIPA).
It’s not every day that a Republican and a Democrat find common ground to solve a very real problem. But at this month’s International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) and Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) stood side-by-side to promote legislation that seeks to combat digital pirates — the ones who let you illegally download movies and songs. The two legislators were on hand at this cavalcade of innovation and progress to garner support from the technology community for their bill, the Online Protection and Enforcement of Digital Trade Act, or OPEN, which they officially introduced on Friday.
Given the reception they met, I think Messrs. Issa and Wyden succeeded. Since first proposing the OPEN Act last December, many of America’s largest Internet companies have registered their support, including eBay, Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, Twitter, Yahoo and Mozilla. This is the exact opposite reaction these very same companies had to Congress’s original legislation, the House’s Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Senate’s PROTECT IP Act (PIPA).
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