Web giants take stand against US anti-piracy bills

The legislation has jolted technology leaders,venture capitalists and entrepreneurs,who are not accustomed to having their free-wheeling online world come under attack.

With a Web-wide protest on Wednesday that includes a 24-hour shutdown of the English-language Wikipedia,the legislative battle over two Internet piracy bills has reached an extraordinary moment a political coming of age for a relatively young and disorganised industry that has largely steered clear of lobbying and other political games in Washington.

The bills,the Stop Online Piracy Act in the House and the Protect IP Act in the Senate,are backed by major media companies and are mostly intended to curtail the illegal downloading and streaming of TV shows and movies online. But the tech industry fears that,among other things,they will give media companies too much power to shut down sites that they say are abusing copyrights.

The legislation has jolted technology leaders,venture capitalists and entrepreneurs,who are not accustomed to having their free-wheeling online world come under attack. One response is Wednesdays protest,which will direct anyone visiting Google and many other Websites to pages detailing the tech industrys opposition to the bills. Wikipedia,run by a nonprofit organisation,is going further than most sites by actually taking material offline no doubt causing panic among countless students who have a paper due.

It said the move was meant to spark greater public opposition to the bills,which could restrict its freedom to publish. Under the proposed legislation,if a copyright holder like Warner Brothers discovers that a foreign site is focused on offering illegal copies of songs or movies,it could seek a court order that would require search engines like Google to remove links to the site and require advertising companies to cut off payments to it.

The major players supporting the legislation include the US Chamber of Commerce and the Motion Picture Association of America. But protests quickly cut into Congressional support for anti-web piracy measures as lawmakers abandoned their backing for the legislation. Freshman Senator Marco Rubio of Florida,a rising Republican star,was first out of the starting gate Wednesday with his announcement that he would no longer back the anti-Internet piracy legislation he co-sponsored.