Groups pushing for action Thursday on piracy bill

Several groups are pushing the Senate Judiciary Committee to act Thursday on legislation that would crack down on online piracy and counterfeiting.

The legislation, sponsored by Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., is on the committee's agenda for its Thursday markup along with several nominations and other bills. Only one of the nominations is viewed as controversial at this point. Several sources say they expect the committee to get to the online piracy bill if it can muster the necessary number of members needed to report legislation out of committee. Leahy said earlier this week that "he'd love" to move the bill at Thursday's markup.

The committee Wednesday released a lengthy list of supporters. They included letters of support sent Wednesday from the Newspaper Association of America and a group of trade unions.

"We appreciate the leadership you have shown with your efforts to move this legislation through the Senate and urge you to continue to push for its enactment during the time remaining in the 111th Congress," according to the letter from such labor groups including the American Federation of Musicians, Communications Workers of America, International Brotherhood of Electrical Engineers and the Teamsters.

"The industries most directly impacted by these rogue websites are among the most vibrant and important in the country; the entertainment and manufacturing sectors provide excellent wages and benefits to American working families and in these very difficult economic times are precisely the types of jobs we cannot afford to lose."

Supporters of the bill have worked to deflect criticism from civil liberties, public interest and some tech groups. The have voiced concerns with provisions in the bill that could lead to the revocation of the domain names of Web sites that engage in piracy or counterfeiting. Critics argue the bill would set a precedent that could harm Internet freedom around the world, undermine the domain name system and hamper innovation.

"It gives the government dramatic new copyright enforcement powers, in particular the ability to make entire websites disappear from the Internet if infringement, or even links to infringement, are deemed to be 'central' to the purpose of the site," Peter Eckersley, senior staff technologist at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, wrote in a blog post on the bill Tuesday. "Rather than just targeting files that actually infringe copyright law, [the bill's] 'nuclear-option' design has the government blacklisting entire sites out of the domain name system -- a reckless scheme that will undermine global Internet infrastructure and censor legitimate online speech."

In addition, a group of law professors sent a letter Tuesday to the committee voicing several objections to the bill. "To begin with, the Act is an unconstitutional abridgment of the freedom of speech protected by the First Amendment," according to the letter signed by such law professors as David Post at Temple University, Michael Froomkin of the University of Miami and Pamela Samuelson of the University of California at Berkeley.