Pressure on House Republicans may have doomed anti-piracy legislation for the year. Darrell Issa, who along with Ron Wyden has been out in front of the opposition to SOPA and PIPA, the respective bills on this issue, says that he secured a promise from House Majority Leader Eric Cantor that no bill will hit the House floor without “consensus.”

The reaction to SOPA and PIPA, the latter which is scheduled to get a vote in the Senate when they come back to Washington, is not a Statement of Administration Policy, nor does it truly grapple with the legislation itself. Instead, the three Administration officials – IP Enforcement Coordinator for OMB Victoria Espinel, US Chief Technology Officer Aneesh Chopra, and Cybersecurity Coordinator Howard Schmidt – lay out broad principles for what legislation to combat online piracy should look like. They do say that this statement of principles will guide “what the Administration will support—and what we will not support.” So it’s worth reading closely.

In what looks like a victory for the grassroots anti-Internet censorship coalition, the sponsors of two bills moving through Congress, PIPA (Protect IP Act) in the Senate and SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) in the House, have agreed to remove or water down controversial provisions that would require ISPs to block domain names that engage in IP theft or piracy.

The opposition to a pair of copyright protection bills that could lead to Internet censorship has grown over the past week. The Online News Association delivered its opposition to the bills, joining the American Society of Newspaper Editors, the State Department is backing off, and the GOP’s Paul Ryan has announced his opposition. But there’s little mainline news coverage.

Let’s define some terms here. The Internet censorship bills have different names depending on which chamber of Congress you’re talking about. The House bill is called SOPA, the Stop Online Piracy Act. That bill is currently in the committee process and has not yet cleared the Judiciary Committee. Observers thought this would happen at the end of last year, but House Judiciary Chairman Lamar Smith cancelled the conclusion of the markup at the last minute.

But in the Senate, the Judiciary Committee has already cleared their version of the legislation, known as PIPA, the Protect Intellectual Property Act.

The dynamic is clear. Once SOPA (and its Senate counterpart Protecting IP Act, or PIPA) became high-profile among the Internet community, the lazy endorsements from companies and various hangers-on became toxic. And now those supporters are scrambling, hollowing out the actual support for the bill. Suddenly, a bill with “widespread” corporate support doesn’t have much support at all. And remember, the corporate support was the only thing propping up SOPA; it’s not like there’s a grassroots army urging Internet censorship.

The markup in the House Judiciary Committee of the Stop Online Piracy Act, or SOPA, has begun. Observers expect at least two days of markups, and the bill wouldn’t see the House floor until sometime thereafter, probably next year. There are over 60 amendments on the bill, and opponents on the committee are dragging out the proceedings. Rep. Zoe Lofgren refused to waive the reading of the bill, so Judiciary staffers needed to spend an hour doing that.

Understand that this bill is getting a hearing, and a markup, because very wealthy interests want it to pass. It so happens that very wealthy interests want it to fail, but that puts it on the agenda as well, because both sides can go to their funders and raise money off the threat of the bill passing or failing. This becomes a bonanza for K Street lobbyists. There are over 1,000 of them working on SOPA.

And how much money are you getting from the SOPA lobby, Mel Watt?

Responding to pressure from Internet giants and a growing coalition of activists, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Lamar Smith (R-TX) amended his legislation on Internet copyrights yesterday, rolling back some of the more dangerous elements. A HJC markup of the Stop Online Piracy Act, or SOPA, will take place this Thursday, but SOPA critics are not yet satisfied.

After a weekend of strategizing, organizers working against the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) plan a mass campaign of action to stop advancement of the bill, which will get a markup in the House Judiciary Committee this Thursday. They got support today from Laurence Tribe, who says the bill creates an unconstitutional prior restraint on internet speech.