The U.S. Senate last week opted to postpone the consideration of the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Protect IP Act (PIPA), two pieces of controversial legislation that aimed to combat online piracy. The move follows an Internet blackout by several sites, most notably Wikipedia, to protest the bills on Jan. 18.

On Jan. 20, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Lamar Smith (R-Texas), who drafted SOPA, said the judiciary committee would postpone the legislation until a wider agreement on a solution to online piracy is reached.

“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 in a statement. “The problem of online piracy is 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.”

He said the committee will continue to work with copyright owners and Internet companies to develop proposals. The committee also welcomes input from organizations and individuals with an “honest difference of opinion” about ways to address online piracy, Smith said.

U.S. Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nevada), the author of PIPA, issued a similar statement regarding his legislation.

Congresswoman Karen Bass (D-California), one of SOPA’s co-sponsors, said it is not unusual for sweeping legislation such as SOPA and PIPA to be postponed, especially when public scrutiny points out unintended consequences.

“I think that’s part of the legislative process, frankly,” Bass said.

She assumed that the judiciary committee will continue to work on the legislation, but SOPA isn’t likely to be addressed on the House floor in 2012. Bass said that going forward, the legislation will need to accommodate for the concerns of the technology industry.

Parker Higgins, an activist for San Francisco-based Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), a nonprofit dedicated to defending civil liberties in the digital world, said his organization was excited to see the postponement of SOPA and PIPA, which would have led to “disastrous consequences.”

He said EFF had a couple big issues with the online piracy bills. They would have required major changes to Internet infrastructure, which would have made it less secure, and could have allowed government officials to silence non-threatening free speech, Higgins said.

“In that sense, it sets up an infrastructure for censorship,” he said.

Additionally, SOPA and PIPA would have made it much more difficult to create a website that legally allows user-generated content, such as Facebook and Twitter, Higgins said. However, he is optimistic that the postponement will result in more refined legislation.

“People are really enthusiastic about this issue,” Higgins said. “We’re hoping we can translate that … into proactive legislation that brings more sanity into the copyright debate or get some kind of assurance that this kind of proposal won’t get as far as it did next time.”