Why the House is stacking the deck on Internet piracy

The House Judiciary Committee held a hearing on a proposed bill to combat online piracy. Five proponents were invited to testify, compared to just one opponent. The decision to invite just one dissenter -- Google -- to testify seemed designed not only to present a lopsided picture of the bill, but also to provide sponsor House Judiciary Committee Chairman Lamar Smith (R-TX) and his allies with a punching bag.

Both committee members and witnesses, such as the Motion Picture Association of America's Michael O'Leary, basically accused Google of working in league with content pirates. In his opening statement, Chairman Smith accused Google of trying to "obstruct the Committee's consideration of bipartisan legislation." Did he mean, by opposing it? O'Leary said that Google searches of movies often put pirate sites above legitimate sites in the search ranking. Amid all the talk of Google seeking to "profit" from piracy, the implication was that Google purposefully engineers the rankings to favor the former. O'Leary offered no evidence of this. The battle here -- basically producers of movies and music versus technology and Internet companies -- is a longstanding one. To get an idea of why so many legislators have taken sides with the former group, one might simply compare how much each side spends on lobbying Congress.