Tech Report: Companies Lobby Against Copyright Bill

SAN FRANCISCO (KCBS)— Some of the nation's biggest technology companies are fiercely lobbying against a bill that would hold them liable if users illegally post copyright-protected material to their sites.

There's plenty of opposition to this, particularly from the high-tech companies and also from civil liberties groups according to KCBS' Technology Analyst Larry Magid.

KCBS Tech Report:

"It could literally pull the plug on certain web domains," Magid said. "Security software company, Trend Micro is worried about it because it could break some of the domain security issues," he added.

According to Magid, the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) is the ability for the federal government to arbitrarily shutdown a domain name because there is some infringing content.

"In fairness, there are many in the entertainment and news industry and congressional folks who support this concept that worry about piracy and fake goods being out there," Magid said.

He feels there are a lot of good intentions behind this, but Congresswoman Lofgren from the Bay Area and other Representatives closer to the Silicon Valley are opposed to it, whereas those closer to Hollywood are very much in favor of it.

Magid said he thinks that some watered-down version of SOPA will pass maybe sometime next year and there's a lot of money involved in both defeating and in passing it.

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