I have written several times about proposed legislation that would give copyright holders and law-enforcement agents unprecedented powers to censor the Internet. Although both the House and Senate versions of the legislation continue to grind their way through the adoption process, they have encountered setbacks that seem to ensure that the final versions, if approved, will no longer incorporate their most damaging provisions.

Most news reports, including mine, have referred to the legislation as SOPA, the Stop Online Piracy Act. In fact, the House and Senate versions of the bill have different names. SOPA is the name of the House's version, authored by Lamar Smith of Texas. The Senate version is called the Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property Act – the PROTECT IP Act-- or PIPA for short.

Both bills are essentially the same. It is common for proposed legislation to make its way through the House and Senate separately. Once both houses of Congress have passed the legislation, it goes to a committee that sands and polishes the language until it has created a single bill that reflects the wishes of both chambers. That bill then gets a final vote, as a formality, in the House and Senate. It's a complicated process.

In the past few days, both the House and Senate versions of the bill have experienced setbacks.

The Senate version of the bill – PIPA – was written by Sen. Patrick Leahy, a Democrat from Vermont. In response to public outcry and expert testimony before the Senate, Leahy now says the DNS-blocking provision of the bill requires “further study” and should not be implemented when and if the bill is passed. Leahy posted a statement on his Web site.

In the House, SOPA author Lamar Smith, a Republican from Texas and chairman of the Judiciary Committee, has taken a further step. He has rewritten the bill to strike the DNS-blocking provision entirely. Like Leahy, he posted a statement on his official Web site.

Both versions of the bill retain other controversial provisions. For example, search engines will be instructed to block links to sites accused of direct and indirect copyright infringement – including, it appears, links to copyrighted material hosted on other sites. Suspected infringers will also lose access to payment services such as PayPal. U.S. companies will be prohibited from advertising on sites suspected of infringement.

Note that in all cases I said “suspected” of infringement. The penalties go into effect without the benefit of due process. First the site is booted off the Internet. Then, perhaps, if the site operator has sufficient cash to protest the move, a trial begins.

A further blow to the proposed legislation has come in the form of a statement from the Obama administration. In response to a petition at the recently created We the People Web site, the President's technical advisors have composed a statement against the current versions of SOPA and PIPA. “Any effort to combat online piracy must guard against the risk of online censorship of lawful activity and must not inhibit innovation by our dynamic businesses large and small,” the statement says.

Despite these developments, a January 18 protest will apparently go ahead as planned. On that day, a large number of Web sites will “go dark,” pulling themselves off the Internet temporarily to dramatize what they see as the legislation's censorship of the Internet. Reddit, Wikipedia, the Cheezburger Network, Destructoid, Red 5 Studios, Major League Gaming, Mozilla, Tucows, the Free Software Foundation, and many other sites are participating in the blackout.

The tide appears to have turned against this poorly conceived legislation, but even with the DNS-blocking language removed, the bills go too far. Here's hoping the legislators' waffling on the legislation's most onerous provisions proves too little, too late, and the blackout puts a stake through SOPA's heart.

Web recommendation: The hacker collective Anonymous is agitating against SOPA too – no surprise there. Have you ever watched one of their videos? I just did today, on YouTube. It's here. J.D. says check it out.

J.D. Hildebrand has written hundreds of articles for dozens of publications and online communities dedicated to software development. He spends far too long reading blogs and news on the Web every day.