Republican U.S. Senators Marco Rubio, a Florida Republican, and John Cornyn, a Texas Republican, ironically chose Facebook to voice their concerns with the SOPA and PIPA bills that are currently up for consideration in both chambers of Congress. Facebook mogul Mark Zuckerberg has been one of the biggest opponents of the SOPA and PIPA legislation.
Mr. Rubio’s comments Tuesday are particularly interesting, considering he originally a co-sponsor of the Protect Intellectual Property Act. Mr Cornyn also had originally been supportive of the bill.
However, they and several other members of both the Senate and the House have in recent days come out and supported a delay on a vote for both bills in both chambers of Congress.
On Wednesday Mr. Rubio wrote a lengthy Facebook post explaining his support for a delay on voting for the PIPA bill in the Senate.
“On the Senate side, I have been a co-sponsor of the PROTECT IP Act because I believe it’s important to protect American ingenuity,” writes Mr. Rubio in the Facebook post Wednesday. “However, we must do this while simultaneously promoting an open, dynamic Internet environment.”
On his Facebook page, Mr. Cornyn was supportive of delaying a vote on the bill.
Their comments come on the same day that Wikipedia, Google, Reddit and other popular websites are staging a 24 hour SOPA blackout protest of the legislation that would greatly curb the freedom of sharing of information on the internet.
Lawmakers and senators though have made it known that two bills are more targeted towards “foreign rogue websites” that explicitly sell and promote pirated versions of popular intellectual property, such as movies, video games, etc.
“The bill defines rogue sites as foreign websites primarily dedicated to the sale and distribution of illegal or infringing material,” said House Judiciary Committee Chairman Lamar Smith (R-TX) in a December press release. Mr. Smith was the lawmaker who originally introduced the SOPA bill.
The strongest supporters of the bill outside of members of Congress are The Motion Picture Association of America, NewsCorp, the Recording Industry Association of America and other established entertainment and media giants who claim their intellectual property is at risk daily.
The aspect of the bill that Internet giants such as Google and Facebook are opposed to though, is shared by both the PIPA and the SOPA legislation. It would require Internet Service Providers to show an error message when users try to navigate the web to websites that are accused of online piracy.
Last week, both Mr. Smith and PIPA sponsor U.S. Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT.) released statements on their websites stating that they would delay the implementation of that aspect of the bill that would require ISPs to block the domain names of those websites considered to be “foreign rogue websites.”
In announcing his opposition to the PIPA legislation on Wednesday, Mr. Rubio also encouraged Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV.) not to “rush” the bill to the Senate floor for a vote. According to New York Daily News, Mr. Reid wants to take a Senate vote on the PIPA bill next week.
The PIPA bill already passed by a unanimous vote through the Senate Judiciary Committee but still needs a majority vote in the Senate to officially receive consideration to be signed into law.
Over the weekend, the White House announced its opposition to both the PIPA and SOPA bills.
