When asked by The Hollywood Reporter on Thursday about the current status of the much-hated anti-online piracy bill the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), MPAA CEO and former Senator Chris Dodd said he was “confident” that there are conversations going on between Hollywood and Silicon Valley.
“Between now and sometime next year [after the presidential election], the two industries need to come to an understanding,” Dodd told the magazine.
The news led some, including TPM, to conclude that Dodd was effectively calling for a revival of SOPA.
But the MPAA on Friday told TPM that is decidedly not the case. As an MPAA spokesperson said in a statement:
“Sen Dodd did not say SOPA is coming back to life. He said the tech and entertainment industries need to come together to work on a new solution and those conversations are beginning. SOPA is gone. The path forward now is a serious conversation between all involved industries about new solutions, and that was Sen Dodd’s point.”
It remains to be seen just what form that “path forward,” will take, but the MPAA appears confident it wont, at the very least, resemble SOPA, which was left for dead in Congress after many Web users and large websites rose up in protest against it in Janauary.
