'Lawful companies ... have nothing to worry about this bill,' Lamar Smith (front) said. Smith fires back at Google, critics

In a blistering statement Wednesday, House Judiciary Chairman Lamar Smith (R-Texas) accused a cast of star tech execs criticizing his Stop Online Piracy Act of not understanding the bill — and he singled out Google’s opposition to the measure as “self-serving.”

“Companies like Google have made billions by working with and promoting foreign rogue websites so they have a vested interest in preventing Congress from stopping rogue websites,” Smith said.


“Lawful companies and websites like Google, Twitter, Yahoo and Facebook have nothing to worry about this bill,” he added.

Smith’s response was prompted by an ad that a host of tech executives — including Google’s Sergey Brin, Twitter co-founders Biz Stone, Jack Dorsey and Evan Williams and Craigslist founder Craig Newmark, among others — launched Wednesday blasting his legislation. The ad features an open letter to Congress and was set to run in The New York Times, The Washington Post and other publications.

The ad says that Smith’s bill and companion legislation in the Senate, the PROTECT IP Act by Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), would chill innovation online, “deny website owners the right to due process” and hand “the U.S. government the power to censor the Web using techniques similar to those used by China, Malaysia and Iran.”

The tech executives also write that the bills would “undermine security online by changing the basic structure of the Internet.”

Nonsense, responded Smith. The manager’s amendment that he unveiled this week, Smith said, addresses the major criticisms of SOPA.

The revision “narrows the scope of the bill to ensure that it only applies to foreign rogue websites,” Smith said. The changes also clarify the definition of rogue sites “as foreign websites primarily dedicated to the sale and distribution of illegal or infringing material or foreign websites that market themselves as websites primarily dedicated to illegal or infringing activity,” he said.

Smith said critics have ignored his attempts to address their issues. He charged that they are “spreading lies about the legislation in an attempt to stall efforts by Congress to combat foreign rogue websites.”

And he went on to single out Google.

“In August, Google paid half a billion dollars to settle a criminal case because of the search engine giant’s active promotion of foreign rogue pharmacies that sold counterfeit and illegal drugs to U.S. patients,” Smith said. “Their opposition to this legislation is self-serving since they profit from doing business with rogue sites that steal and sell America’s intellectual property.”

Google took umbrage at Smith’s claims.

“We fight pirates and counterfeiters everyday and we believe, like many other tech companies, that the best way to stop them is through targeted legislation that would require ad networks and payment processors — like ours — to cut off sites dedicated to piracy or counterfeiting,” Google said.

The search giant added that changes Smith made to his bill to address criticisms don’t “clear up the tech industries’ concerns” that the measure would encourage government censorship on the Web and deprive site owners accused of hosting illegal content of due process.

This article first appeared on POLITICO Pro at 1:13 p.m. on December 14, 2011.

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