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The same group of the world's largest technology companies, including Facebook and Google, that aggressively opposed the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) are now throwing their weight behind the recently released and amicably named alternative: OPEN. After California congressman Darrell Issa, a Republican, and Oregon's senior Senator Ron Wyden, a Democrat, introduced the new bill last week, civil rights groups seem like they've been too distracted trying to stop SOPA to notice the alternative approach. With good reason, too. On Tuesday, Lamar Smith introduced an updated version of SOPA he hopes will convince enough members of the House Judiciary Committee to send the bill to the Floor this week. Can Google, Facebook and their Silicon Valley friends -- not to mention an endless list of people who work on the Internet and are protesting the bill -- convince Congress to consider OPEN as a compromise, a solution to America's anti-piracy woes? It depends.

So far, it's very clear that tech companies hate SOPA. Until OPEN showed up last week, the only thing they could do about it was yell and scream about that fact. And boy were they boisterous. Indeed, legal experts agreed: SOPA did open a lot of dangerous doors, many of which could lead to the widespread censorship of the Internet. Harvard law professor Laurence Tribe recently even argued recently that the bill violates the First Amendment. Nevertheless, SOPA is still being considered by the House, and while many Reps have stood up in opposition to the bill, it has a fighting chance of moving forward, especially with Smith's update. The changes do make the bill sound less evil. "The proposed changes include: clarifying that the bill is aimed at foreign Web sites, nixing language that would have required redirection from rogue sites, clarifying that service providers don’t need to block subdomains and narrowing the definitions of some key terms in the bill to focus on bad actors," explains Hayley Tsukayama at The Washington Post. But censorship is censorship, maintain its opponents. TechDirt's copyright correspondent Mike Masnick argues against the updated SOPA:

What you get is something a little closer to what PROTECT IP is in the Senate. However, it still is a bill that requires censorship of the American internet for the first time, and which still contains broad definitions that will be abused by rightsholders. This isn't a fix. This is getting rid of the parts that were put in to be sacrificed on purpose, and still having a really bad bill.

Enter OPEN. Unlike SOPA, the new bill does not suggest blocking domains and handing down strict punishments to copyright infringers through the Attorney General. Instead, OPEN sets up a process with several checks and balances that would send copyright infringement claims through the International Trade Commission. In a letter co-signed by Facebook, Google, Twitter, Yahoo and five others, the titans of Silicon Valley propped up the Issa-Markey alternative -- it's called the Online Protection & ENforcement of Digital Trade act, in full. "We commend your effort and look forward to supporting the legislation upon its formal introduction," the letter reads, pointing how the bill's "approach targets foreign rogue sites without inflicting collateral damage on legitimate, law-abiding U.S. Internet companies."