Following what’s been hailed as the largest online protest in history by citizens and Web-based companies around the nation, two bills in Congress that opponents feared would have harmed the Internet have been shelved.

Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nevada) said he would postpone the vote planned for next Tuesday of the Protect IP Act, or PIPA, which had been introduced by Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont).

The announcement came the same day as Congressman Lamar Smith (R-Texas) said he would shelve his bill, HR 3261, the Stop Online Piracy, or SOPA.

Fight for the Future, which ran the largest organizing sites for the recent SOPA protests – www.sopastrike.com and www.americancensorship.org – welcomed the announcement on the bills, which it said were about Web censorship, which would have harmed innovation.

Fight for the Future Co-founder Holmes Wilson said that “any law that lets the copyright lobby block our websites, censor our search results, or cut off our PayPal accounts – without even going through a judge – will be soundly defeated.”

“The public has spoken in no uncertain terms. And the clear message to Washington is that you can’t let corporate lobbyists dictate Internet policy, you can’t tamper with the open architecture of the Internet, and you can’t craft any future legislation without giving the public a seat at the table,” said Craig Aaron, president and chief executive officer of the Free Press Action Fund.

Reid’s and Smith’s decisions were announced two days after an estimated 115,000 Web sites took part in a strike to protest the two bills, according to the advocacy group, Fight for the Future.

In addition, the group reported that 10,000,000 people signed petitions against the bills, and 3,000,000 people sent e-mails to protest them.

Fight for the Future Co-founder Tiffiniy Cheng accused the Motion Picture Association of America of trying to quietly force SOPA through Congress.

However, Cheng added, “when Internet users started paying attention, real democracy happened. This is a watershed moment in the fight against lobbyists’ influence on politics.”

SOPA and PIPA had received backing from the Motion Picture Association of America, U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the National Sheriffs’ Association, International Union of Police Associations, the National Association of Manufacturers, the AFL-CIO, the National Songwriters Association and the National Center for Victims of Crime, and more than 100 other associations.

Supporters argued that billions of dollars are lost due to Internet piracy of copyrighted materials.

But opposition, which had grown significantly last fall – and included Internet giants Google, Facebook, Wikipedia and many others – argued the impacts could be much more serious, and could put a serious chill on innovation, business and investment.

Attention soon focused on the bill’s corporate supporters, with GoDaddy.com losing tens of thousands of Web domain registrations due to its early support of the bill. It later withdrew support.

Petitions on the bills sent to President Barack Obama resulted in his technology and cybersecurity staff posting a Jan. 14 statement that stressed that protecting intellectual property online must not come at the expense of an open and innovative Internet.

The White House analysis of some of the provisions in the legislation concluded that they posed “a real risk to cybersecurity and yet leave contraband goods and services accessible online.”

The statement continued, “While we are strongly committed to the vigorous enforcement of intellectual property rights, existing tools are not strong enough to root out the worst online pirates beyond our borders,” with the Obama Administration calling on all sides to work together to pass legislation “that provides prosecutors and rights holders new legal tools to combat online piracy originating beyond U.S. borders while staying true to the principles outlined above in this response.”

Reid said Friday that he was postponing the PIPA vote “in light of recent events.”

"There is no reason that the legitimate issues raised by many about this bill cannot be resolved,” he said in a statement released by his office.

“Counterfeiting and piracy cost the American economy billions of dollars and thousands of jobs each year, with the movie industry alone supporting over 2.2 million jobs,” Reid continued. “We must take action to stop these illegal practices. We live in a country where people rightfully expect to be fairly compensated for a day's work, whether that person is a miner in the high desert of Nevada, an independent band in New York City, or a union worker on the back lots of a California movie studio.”

Smith said the House Judiciary Committee will postpone consideration of SOPA “until there is wider agreement on a solution.”

He said he’d heard from SOPA’s critics and took their concerns seriously. “It is clear that we need to revisit the approach on how best to address the problem of foreign thieves that steal and sell American inventions and products.”

Smith said online piracy is a problem too big to ignore. “American intellectual property industries provide 19 million high-paying jobs and account for more than 60 percent of U.S. exports. The theft of America’s intellectual property costs the U.S. economy more than $100 billion annually and results in the loss of thousands of American jobs. Congress cannot stand by and do nothing while American innovators and job creators are under attack.”

On Wednesday, Pro Publica reported that there were 80 proponents of SOPA and PIPA in Congress, with 31 opponents, including Lake County’s representative in the House, Congressman Mike Thompson (D-St. Helena), as Lake County News has reported.

By Friday, that had flipped, with 61 opponents or co-sponsors, and 189 opponents or members of Congress who were leaning toward a “no” vote, Pro Publica reported at http://projects.propublica.org/sopa/.

California’s two senators, Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein, remained in the supporters’ column in Pro Publica’s latest report.

On Wednesday Thompson announced the introduction of the bipartisan Online Protection & Enforcement of Digital Trade (OPEN) Act, H.R. 3782, for which he is an original co-sponsor.

According to Thompson, the OPEN Act would enable holders of intellectual property to petition the International Trade Commissions to launch investigations into whether a foreign Web site’s only purpose is to engage in infringement of U.S. copyrights and trademarks.

A timeline of the SOPA protests can be found at http://sopastrike.com/timeline.

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