Despite criticism of the bill from the America’s leading internet engineers and companies, it looks like the Stop Online Piracy Act, which we like to call the Stop Online Privacy Act, will be voted on soon.

Yesterday the bill got stalled in the committee stage but lawmakers repeatedly rejected attempts to water-down the bill. Apparently most of them have already cashed their “re-election contributions” from the music and film industry lobby groups and must press ahead with it. The committee voted 22-12 to reject an amendment that would do away with the bill’s most controversial provision that lets the Attorney General order changes to core internet infrastructure in order to stop copyright infringement.

But there are signs that the internet-blacklisting legislation was moving too fast. Republican Dan Lungren wanted to know why this law was being fast tracked. Zoe Lofgren added that the measure went too far saying that w never tried to filter the telephone networks to block illegal content on the telephone network, yet that is precisely what this legislation would do relative to the internet.

The law grants private companies the ability to de-fund websites they allege to be trafficking in unauthorized copyright and trademark goods. It actually means that the court case that Verizon lost against YouTube would not have gone ahead. Verizon would have just taken YouTube's domain name. The latest version requires a judge’s signature to order ad networks and banks to stop doing business with a site “dedicated” to infringing activities, which might slow the silliness down a bit.