SOPA Defeat Haunts Efforts to Rein In Illegal Copying, British Official Says

“It’s going to be five years before anybody puts his head above the parapet again.” That’s how Michael Weatherly, a member of the British Parliament and intellectual property adviser to Prime Minister David Cameron, handicapped the prospects for a fresh legislative push against online piracy in the United States.

Following the defeat in 2012 of the Stop Online Piracy Act, movie companies and other advocates for copyright owners both here and in Britain have been pointed toward voluntarism. That has meant, among other things, agreements under which Internet service providers send escalating warnings to those who are believed to be downloading copyrighted material illegally.

But Weatherly also talked of escalating pressure -- legal and otherwise -- on those who advertise on sites where illegal downloading is taking place. “There are some laws in place, but we might need to beef up a couple of them a bit more,” suggested Weatherly, who spoke of an effort to “strangle the advertising revenue from the illegal sites.”