Rob Zerban:

Paul Ryan's decision, as a partisan leader and head of the Budget Committee, to back away from legislation actively pursued by another Republican Committee Chair, is a major accomplishment.

It's interesting that advocates of free speech and good Internet governance have adopted the strategy of flooding the opposition with campaign donations as a way of influencing an elected official's position on a pending bill.

Do you have important initiatives in Washington that could be undermined if they become the target of popular protests?

Reading between the lines of his statement, Ryan has not returned the "large contributions from pro-SOPA interests", and although he does not "support H.R. 3261 in its current form" [emphasis mine], this qualified language suggests that an amended version of the bill could gain his full support. Note that the press release is entitled "Congressman Paul Ryan Voices Concerns with H.R. 3261" [emphasis mine].

Is there a viable alternative course of action for those like Ryan who seek to address the "legitimate problem" of foreign-sourced counterfeit goods? Is there a framework for evaluating the acceptability of potential courses of action? Is there an approach that achieves the legitimate objectives of commercial stakeholders without infringing individual rights and sacrificing the public interest? Or is Ryan still in the wrong because he believes there is a legitimate problem when in fact there is not?

Temporarily avoiding imminent disaster is a kind of 'accomplishment', but it's akin to deferring a decision on the payroll tax 'holiday' for another two months. There's an endless supply of bad ideas waiting to be killed at great expense. Actually producing an elegant solution to a legitimate problem would be an Accomplishment of a higher order.

noteworthy wrote:
It's interesting that advocates of free speech and good Internet governance have adopted the strategy of flooding the opposition with campaign donations as a way of influencing an elected official's position on a pending bill.

There is some irony there, but this is more or less how our system works. I suspect that fundraising in Silicon Valley plays a key role in the fact that some Congressmen have been vocally opposed to SOPA. There is also a limit to what grass roots opponents could do to oppose the campaigns of politicians who support SOPA without spending any money. Even flyering costs money.

I think a lot of people rationalize that individual expenditures are OK but expenditures by corporate entities are not OK. However, that still leaves you with a system where certain economic classes wield a hell of a lot more influence than others.

What is the "right way" to oppose a bill in our system?

Is there a viable alternative course of action for those like Ryan who seek to address the "legitimate problem" of foreign-sourced counterfeit goods?

Yes. I think there are approaches to this problem that would be reasonable.

SOPA and PIPA have two primary provisions.

1. The creation of an internet censorship infrastructure run by DOJ.
2. Domestic payment processors and advertising networks cannot service sites that are dedicated to infringement.

1. The first provision is not acceptable under any circumstances. It has to go. The way you deal with foreign sites is through international collaboration on intellectual property laws. We do tons of this. I'm not sure why we've thrown our hands up on it.

2. The problem with this provision as it was originally written as a total lack of due process. If anyone anywhere made any allegation that a site was "dedicated to infringement" these services providers would have 5 days to stop serving that site. Thats not acceptable. However, if you have a court proceeding with a standard of evidence and consequences for false allegations, I don't see a problem with this.

There is an alternative proposal called the OPEN Act that provides a mechanism for this.