House lawmakers today battled over a controversial online piracy bill, with supporters reiterating that the bill will help stop "rogue" Web sites from selling counterfeit goods and detractors insisting that more time is needed to consider such far-reaching legislation.

House lawmakers today battled over a controversial online piracy bill, with supporters reiterating that the bill will help stop "rogue" Web sites from selling counterfeit goods and detractors insisting that more time is needed to consider such far-reaching legislation.

Rep. Jason Chaffetz, a Utah Republican, suggested that members of Congress might need a tech 101 course.

"Let's bring the nerds in and get this right," Chaffetz said during a markup hearing on Capitol Hill. "If you don't know what DNSSEC is, you don't know what you're doing."

Bill sponsor Rep. Lamar Smith, however, said the legislation "will make it more difficult for those who engage in criminal behavior to reach directly into the U.S. market to inflict harm on American consumers."

At issue is the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), which would expand the ability of the Justice Department to go after Web sites overseas that traffic in fake goods like counterfeit purses or prescription drugs. According to Smith, a Texas Republican, the DOJ would have to get a court order against an infringing site, and if granted, could request that the site be blocked. Search engines would then have to remove links to those sites.

Those opposed to the bill, however, expressed concern about provisions that would require payment processors like PayPal or MasterCard to cut off access to infringing sites. They worried that copyright holders might go after legitimate sites in the U.S., either by mistake or for competitive purposes."

To address some of the concerns, Rep. Smith introduced a manager's amendment to the bill, which removed the ability of a copyright holder to cut off payment processing to a particular Web site, among other things.

"The manager's amendment ... makes clear that no harm can come to Domain Name System Security Extensions (DNSSEC) by eliminating any requirement to direct or redirect users to another site," Smith said today. "It protects the security and integrity of the DNS by establishing a 'kill switch' that will allow a provider to not carry out an order upon a finding that it would 'impair the security or integrity of the system.' The amendment ensures that the bill cannot be construed to require any order that would harm the DNS, and requires a study to ensure no DNS harm."

Smith said he believes the amendment "addresses the legitimate concerns that have been expressed, including protection of the First Amendment, due process, and the integrity and security of the Internet."

Balkanization of the Internet?

Not everyone is convinced, in particular Rep. Zoe Lofgren, a California Democrat.

"Our government has always gone after the criminality [on the Internet], but it's never tried to use the communication network itself to make illegal conduct possible," Lofgren said. "If this bill passes with the mandate for domain name and other Internet filtering intact, I think it will be historic and not in a good way."

"I think that once the government has a taste of this power, the temptation to exert an ever-greater amount of control over the Internet through filtering technology will be irresistible," Lofgren suggested.

Fellow California Democrat Howard Berman, a SOPA co-sponsor, took issue with Lofgren's characterization, saying it made it sound like the U.S. was going to become like China or Iran with respect to Internet filtering.

"That's nonsense," Berman said. "There's a big difference between regulating commercial activity designed to deceive the consumer or violate the ownership rights of a particular piece of property and seeking to suppress political conduct, speech, or dissent."

"I'm not going to suggest that enforcement of a civil action is the same as oppression by China, but the technological road this is leading us down is a serious one," Lofgren responded. "This is the beginning of the Balkanization of the Internet."

Today's hearing started with an hour-long reading of Rep. Smith's 74-page manager's amendment, after which members debated the issue for several hour. They broke just before 2pm for a vote and are expected to return this afternoon for even more discussion, so stay tuned.

Opposition Continues

Despite the manager's amendment, the Electronic Frontier Foundation this week said it was still opposed to SOPA.

Smith's concessions "are positive steps, but frankly, the original provisions were so overbroad and poorly written that we suspect the bill's backers had always planned to eliminate them, as a supposed 'compromise,'" EFF's Corynne McSherry wrote in a blog post.

Also this week, the co-founders of top tech firms like Google, Twitter, Yahoo, and eBay penned an open letter (below) in opposition to SOPA.

"We've all had the good fortune to found Internet companies and nonprofits in a regulatory climate that promotes entrepreneurship, innovation, the creation of content and free expression online," they wrote. "However, we're worried that the PROTECT IP Act and the Stop Online Piracy Actwhich started out as well-meaning efforts to control piracy onlinewill undermine that framework."

The PROTECT IP Act would allow the government to that would require ISPs, search engines, ad networks, and online payment processors to stop supporting sites with pirated content.