anti-Smith poster created by SOPA opponents
© n/aAn anti-Smith poster created by SOPA opponents.
Representative Lamar Smith has spent the last three months going to war with the entire Internet. And a few of the web's biggest sites going on strike isn't about to stop him now.

With a vote on SOPA indefinitely delayed, several of the most controversial portions of the bill excised and the White House committed to opposing the bill in its current form, the tech industry's least favorite piece of legislation seems close to dead. A day of protest against SOPA and its Senate cousin the Protect IP Act, in which sites like Reddit, Wikipedia, Boing Boing, Major League Gaming, The Cheezburger Network, Tor and others plan to go offline for twelve hours Wednesday, may have seemed like overkill.

But right on cue, Texas representative Lamar Smith has vowed to pick up what's left of the tattered bill he introduced last October and push forward a markup hearing on the legislation in February. "To enact legislation that protects consumers, businesses and jobs from foreign thieves who steal America's intellectual property, we will continue to bring together industry representatives and Members to find ways to combat online piracy," he wrote in a statement to reporters. "I am committed to continuing to work with my colleagues in the House and Senate to send a bipartisan bill to the White House that saves American jobs and protects intellectual property."

Proponents of SOPA, which seeks to block access to foreign sites accused of violating copyright and any site that helps to access those blocked sites, have already agreed to remove a portion of the bill that would use the Domain Name System to disappear sites from the Internet. But the bill still contains a provision that allows Internet service providers to block access to foreign sites, as well as taking legal action against any site that offers circumvention tools, a vaguely worded provision that could cause problems for any site that allows user-generated content.

The social media site Reddit declared last week that it would stage a 12-hour strike Wednesday in opposition to SOPA and Protect-IP, and Wikipedia followed with a similar promise earlier this week, declaring in a statement that the bills "would be devastating to the free and open web." Google has committed to include a banner on its home page in protest of the legislation.

Representative Smith railed against Wikipedia's blackout plan in a separate statement: "It is ironic that a website dedicated to providing information is spreading misinformation about the Stop Online Piracy Act. The bill will not harm Wikipedia, domestic blogs or social networking sites," he wrote. "This publicity stunt does a disservice to its users by promoting fear instead of facts. Perhaps during the blackout, Internet users can look elsewhere for an accurate definition of online piracy."

In fact, Smith's statements will likely only solidify a day of protest that might have begun to seem unnecessarily disruptive, a sentiment Wikimedia Foundation director Sue Gardner addressed in a statement on Wikipedia.org.

"Why now, if some American legislators appear to be in tactical retreat on SOPA?," she asked.
The reality is that we don't think SOPA is going away, and PIPA is still quite active. Moreover, SOPA and PIPA are just indicators of a much broader problem. All around the world, we're seeing the development of legislation intended to fight online piracy, and regulate the Internet in other ways, that hurt online freedoms. Our concern extends beyond SOPA and PIPA: they are just part of the problem. We want the Internet to remain free and open, everywhere, for everyone.