Yesterday, Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Tx) introduced the Stopping Online Piracy Act
(H.R. 3261), also called the Enforcing and Protecting American Rights
Against Sites Intent on Theft and Exploitation Act (E-PARASITE Act). The
following statement can be attributed to Larry Downes, Senior Adjunct Fellow at TechFreedom:

Last summer, House leaders assured Silicon Valley they would
correct serious defects in the Senate’s Protect IP bill, defects that
would have caused long-term unintended damage to innovation. SOPA does
just the opposite. SOPA would give media companies unwarranted and
unprecedented new powers to shape the structure and content of the
Internet. It creates vague, sweeping standards for secondary liability,
drafted to ensure maximum litigation. It treats all U.S. consumers as
guilty until proven innocent. SOPA is an early Christmas present for
Hollywood, and a jobs bill for trial lawyers.

SOPA, regrettably, represents a big step backward in Washington’s
efforts to support the digital revolution, one of the only sectors of
the economy that continues to grow. A bill that was supposed to target
the "worst of the worst" foreign websites committing blatant and
systemic copyright and trademark infringement has morphed inexplicably
into an unrestricted hunting license for media companies to harass
anyone—foreign or domestic--who questions their timetable for digital
transformation.

Only by carefully crafting narrow remedies against truly rogue
websites can Congress achieve copyright's goal of promoting creativity
without undermining basic freedoms and distorting the healthy
development of the Internet itself.

Downes is available for further comment at media@techfreedom.org. For his earlier commentary on SOPA's predecessor bills, PIPA and COICA, see "Five Essential Changes to Protect IP" at CNET and "Why Internet Content Wars will Never End" at Forbes.