Congress to vote at a later date on internet piracy legislation in a surprise blow to Hollywood and top media firms

The US House Judiciary committee considering the controversial Stop Online Piracy Act (Sopa) abruptly adjourned Friday with no new vote date set. The surprise victory for the tech community came amidst a barrage of online criticism and in spite of the fact that most politicians on the committee appeared to support the act.

On the second day of discussions committee chairman and chief sponsor of the legislation, Rep Lamar Smith (R-Texas), conceded to calls for further investigation of claims that the legislation will damage the infrastructure of the internet.

Top media firms, including some of the biggest names in Hollywood, have been lobbying hard for the legislation claiming online piracy is costing them billions in lost sales and jobs.

But executives from Google, Wikipedia and other high profile tech firms have accused the committee of pursuing the same strategy used by China to censor its internet and claimed the legislation as drafted would damage the Internet's global structure.

The online community has rallied against Sopa. Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales threatened to pull his website offline if the legislation wasn't amended. The hashtag Sopa has been trending on Twitter this week as people worried about its implications.

But Sopa isn't dead. Smith said the hearing would resume at the "earliest practical day that Congress is in session." With the Christmas holidays coming, the next hearing will be weeks away at the earliest and with the 2012 election looming it will become increasingly difficult to schedule an early vote.

At the hearing, Rep Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) urged Smith to postpone the session until technical experts could be brought in to discuss the impact of altering the internet's domain-naming system to fight piracy.

The tech industry's biggest names have come out against Sopa, including computer scientist Vint Cerf, one of the founders of the internet. He recently warned Sopa would begin "a worldwide arms race of unprecedented 'censorship' of the Web." Stuart Baker, former homeland security assistant secretary has also warned Sopa would do "great damage to internet security."

Given that the majority of the committee's members seemed to be in favor of the legislation, the decision to delay will come as a major blow to the media firms that have lobbied hard for its passage. Holmes Wilson, co-founder of Fight For The Future, a lobbying group, said: "It's a huge victory, if a temporary one. This is not what they wanted."

He said it was clear that the number of people watching the proceedings online and discussing it on Twitter and Facebook made it difficult to pass the bill without greater scrutiny. "In the past legislation could just have been passed with few people noticing. That isn't possible anymore," he said.

The legislation is not the only anti-piracy bill now passing through Washington. Another bill, know as Protect IP, is also pending.