Dear Lamar Smith & House Judiciary: Have You Learned Nothing From SOPA? | Techdirt
The latest controversy with the Intellectual Property Attache Act, formerly a provision within the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), is entirely self-inflicted by its lead sponsors. You do not have to be a political strategist to figure out that trying to pass a piece of SOPA might in fact inflame the wide array of opposition to SOPA. You also can not cry foul when you secretly develop the legislation, hold no legislative hearing on its merits, and attempt (and thankfully fail) to move the legislation through the Committee almost 24 hours after it was leaked to the press. Each of these steps flies in the face of the request made by opponents to SOPA for more openness, inclusion, and transparency for intellectual property policy decisions. It is as if the some believe that the business of copyright legislating can proceed as usual and that the Internet Black Out never occurred. If the House Judiciary Committee wants to shake off the ghost of SOPA and avoid having legislation blow up in their collective faces, they need to rethink how they move intellectual property bills. The Committee must proactively work at justifying to the public why a bill is necessary and win their support for its passage before voting it out. It should stop trying to move bills first and put the burden on the public to stop them from blindly moving forward.
