One post-election question up for debate is where the Republican Party would go to try and capture the areas of the electorate they cannot penetrate – particularly minorities and the youth vote. The watered-down version of the DREAM Act suggested a policy path for reaching some segments of the minority electorate. And for about 24 hours this weekend, it looked like Republicans would make their pitch to the youth vote on copyright law.

Late on Friday, the Republican Study Committee, the far-right caucus in the House, put out a policy paper on copyright reform that really sought to upend traditional notions of the issue, which in the US really skews in favor of copyright holders.

[Editor's Note: For the Latest on PIPA, Vote Postponed.]

We are very close to being able to predict a loss for the Protect IP Act, or PIPA, in next week’s cloture vote in the Senate. According to the Open Congress whip count, which is user-generated and seems to have the most updated information, 33 Senators are either co-sponsors or leaning toward supporting PIPA, and 38 Senators are either confirmed No votes or leaning that way. As we all know, it takes 41 votes to block a cloture vote. So if the leaners pan out we’ll see cloture go down.

The Internet censorship bills, SOPA and PIPA, bouncing around Congress don’t really work unless you apply them globally. If other countries do not vigorously protect their entertainment and high-tech industry’s copyrights in the same way as the United States, those industries will lose market share domestically. So the US has taken to pressuring other countries to pass anti-piracy laws through their legislatures. And this pressure rose to the level of threats, we have now learned from leaked letters.

We’ve learned today that broadcast media outlets want to evade campaign finance disclosure rules. Not to be outdone, print media has decided to collude to intimidate bloggers into paying them.

Sen. Ron Wyden joined Rep. Darrell Issa, of all people, in announcing the counter-offer. The “Copyright Alliance,” the umbrella trade group pushing the Internet censorship bill, didn’t like it, so it’s making the right enemies. There’s a bit more on the alternative here. Rather than turning federal judges into mediators of international copyright disputes, this proposal at least puts the question in the right venue.

Why does Bieber even know who Amy Klobuchar is, let alone this animosity? It’s about S.978, the so-called “Protect IP Act,” and the House version, known as the “Stop Online Piracy Act.” Among other things, these bills would make Web streaming of copyrighted work a felony, with a 5-year jail sentence. Because the Beebs got his start by posting his renditions of other people’s songs on YouTube, activists have used him as a rallying point, creating the site FreeBieber.org. Bieber’s lawyers have filed a cease and desist order against the site, incidentally, so Bieber isn’t ALL that committed to Internet freedom.