Faced with Protest, One Senator's Support for Anti-Piracy Bill Falters

The latest grumblings (or lack thereof) from the lawmakers on Capitol Hill suggest that they're coming around to the idea that the latest anti-piracy efforts in the House and the Senate might've been a little hasty. Patrick Leahy, a senator from Vermont who co-authored the PROTECT IP anti-piracy bill, posted a press release on Thursday, confessing that his legislation needed "more study" before implementation. It's a sure sign that's he's starting to cave to political pressure -- much of which is coming from the unexpectedly increasingly politically powerful Reddit -- and other lawmakers could follow suit.

Then again, they could not. Take Lamar Smith, the Texas congressman who authored the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) which is the House's more incendiary and more draconian version of the Senate's PROTECT IP. News broke on Thursday that Smith himself engaged in some questionable copyright practices in building his personal website. The Texas congressman had used a photo that he didn't necessarily have the right permissions for, and in an unapologetic report, Vice's Jamie Lee Curtis Taete put him on the spot with a report unapologetically titled " The Author of SOPA Is a Copyright Violator." The photo thing was a small thing by any measure and probably not something that would get the man thrown in jail. But nobody likes a hypocrite.

Read the full story at The Atlantic Wire.