Piracy

Despite complaints about his failure to support Hollywood's position on online piracy, President Obama does not appear to have lost his fundraising base in the entertainment community. As Obama arrives in Los Angeles on Wednesday, local campaign fundraisers said there has been no drop-off in Hollywood donations to his reelection bid since the D.C. demise of long-sought anti-piracy legislation. Hollywood's chief lobbyist Chris Dodd suggested last month that Obama and his fellow Democrats could pay a price for not representing the industry's interests in Washington.

  Washington's political gridlock has had at least one advantage: It allowed businesses and interest groups to reduce their lobbying expenses last year, the first time that's happened in more than a decade. Overall, the amount spent on lobbying was nearly $3.3 billion last year, down from $3.5 billion the year before, according to a preliminary analysis of disclosure forms by the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics. It marked the first time since 1999 that spending on lobbying, year-over-year, dropped in Washington.

After a week in which their anti-piracy legislation got derailed by the full force of the Internet lobby, the mood in Hollywood was one of anger, frustration and a growing resignation that the entertainment industry will be forced to accept a much weaker law than originally envisioned. A full-on counterattack by a tech industry opposed to the toughest elements in the congressional bills, including a well-publicized Wednesday shutdown by key Internet sites, halted the legislation.

The Justice Department has conducted a major action to shut down MegaUpload, a popular file-sharing site widely used for free downloads of movies and television shows. After receiving indictments from a grand jury in Virginia for racketeering conspiracy, conspiracy to commit copyright infringement and other charges Jan. 5, federal authorities Thursday arrested four people and executed more than 20 search warrants in the U.S. and eight foreign countries. Authorities also seized 18 domain names and an estimated $50 million in assets, including servers run in Virginia and Washington, D.C. MegaUpload is a "digital locker" that allows users to store files that can be streamed or downloaded by others.

The derailing of long-sought legislation to combat digital piracy is a troubling sign for the entertainment industry, whose insider lobbyists were routed by technology companies armed with the brute-force power of the Internet. Tech still lags behind Hollywood in campaign contributions, but its leaders showed this week that they could mobilize opposition against bills that threatened the Web's wide-open borders. Lawmakers' ears were still ringing Thursday from the thousands of calls and emails that flooded Capitol Hill on Wednesday, the day Wikipedia led about 10,000 websites in a blackout to protest the legislation.

  Chinese Internet users are applauding the U.S. tech industry's Web "strike" this week to protest federal anti-piracy bills that would give Uncle Sam greater control of cyberspace. As websites including Wikipedia shut down and millions of Americans complained to lawmakers about the potential for government censorship, Chinese netizens spoke admiringly of the public rebellion. Such a display in China would be nearly impossible right now, given Beijing's tight grip on citizens' online activities.

Wikipedia went dark for a day. Google hid its logo under a black shroud. And hundreds of other websites darkened their pages temporarily in a massive, coordinated protest against a pair of bills that would step up enforcement of copyrights and trademarks. Wednesday's demonstration provoked such an intense backlash against the Protect IP Act and the Stop Online Piracy Act (better known as PIPA and SOPA) that by the end of the week, more than 100 lawmakers had declared their opposition and both bills had been placed on hold.

  Until this week, entertainment industry executives thought they had the votes for new federal legislation cracking down on foreign websites that traffic in pirated movies and music and cost them billions. They lined up support from the powerful pharmaceutical industry and labor unions, and organized an impressive bipartisan coalition in Congress. Then Silicon Valley struck back and appears to have outflanked Hollywood. The result was on full display Tuesday night as Wikipedia, Craigslist and other popular sites shut down for a threatened 12- to 24-hour strike, said to be the Internet's first such stoppage.

In cutting off access to thousands of websites for a day, the tech industry flexed its political muscle with a don't-mess-with-the-Web campaign that highlighted its vast reach and how indispensable the Internet has become. The sweeping blackout to protest federal anti-piracy bills sparked frustration and confusion Wednesday but had its intended effect - disrupting the usual flow of the Internet while mobilizing opposition among online users and lawmakers. More than 10,000 websites participated in the strike against the Stop Online Piracy Act and the Protect Intellectual Property Act, bills that opponents say could lead to censorship online and force some websites out of business.

Most people probably haven't paid much attention to the huge corporations waging war in Washington over legislation designed to crack down on online theft of movies, music and other content. But the conflict will hit consumers in the face Wednesday, when Wikipedia and a number of other websites intend to go dark to protest the proposed changes. Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales announced Monday that the hugely popular online encyclopedia would be unavailable for 24 hours to protest the Stop Online Piracy Act and related legislation, which opponents say could lead to censorship or the complete shutdown of some websites.