GOP flip-flops over supporting digital copyright reforms

Activists protest the Stop Online Piracy Act and the Protect IP Act earlier this year.

(Credit: CNET)

In an bizarre policy flip-flop, a group of more than 160 House Republicans appeared to endorse extensive digital copyright reform on Friday, then disavowed its position the next day.

The House Republican Study Committee, an influential collection of conservatives that tends to pull the House leadership to the right, published a set of recommendations that could have been penned by Larry Lessig and the Electronic Frontier Foundation: expanded fair use rights, lower penalties for "willful" infringement, and dramatically abbreviated copyright terms.

That seemed to be more evidence that Republicans had become copyright skeptics, especially since most of the lobbying for expanding the law over the last few decades had come from Hollywood, which happened to funnel millions of dollars to President Obama's re-election bid. CNET reported in February that the Stop Online Piracy Act represented a new beginning in GOP misgivings about copyright legislation.

But then the... [Read more]