The SOPA anti-piracy bill might be strongly backed by the Hollywood community, but the Consumer Electronics Association – the group behind the annual Consumer Electronics Show – wants no part of it.

In a statement to the House Judiciary Committee on H.R. 3261 – the "Stop Online Piracy Act" (or SOPA) – the organization voiced concerns about the bill, warning of collateral damage to innovation in the electronics field.

"CEA and its members are eager to support legislation that is directed to foreign 'rogue sites' – the 'worst of the worst' – whose infringing activities lie beyond the reach of existing U.S. authority, and have no conceivable justification under U.S. law," the group said. "But as written, H.R. 3261will do little to stop piracy and instead will undermine both bona fide online U.S. businesses, create new private causes of action and weaken the open Internet that encourages free expression."

The group called the definition of theft "extremely overbroad" and said a single copyright complaint from a company can be a "death sentence" to a legitimate business.

"The law would require not just a 'take down' of the controversial product, but a shutdown of all online purchasing and advertising for any other product on the site," the group said. "The plaintiff need only complain that the business is 'marketing' a product for a 'use' that would be copyright infringement.

"This sort of claim has been commonly, and often unsuccessfully, made against innovative and legitimate consumer electronics products. In 2000, such a claim was made by several motion picture studios against Replay TV, an early competitor of TiVo and a forerunner of the DVR products now routinely distributed by cable and satellite companies to their subscribers – based only on the product’s ability to search, record, index, and retrieve content."

The group also said it believes DNS blocking provisions in the bill will hurt legitimate businesses more than pirates, since pirates are able to circumvent those measures.

Democrats weren’t the only ones who were hit hard by the mid-term elections. Proponents of Net neutrality may have seen their best chance of that bill passing fade as well.

Every one of the 95 candidates who had pledged to support the bill, which would force Internet providers like Xfinity and Time Warner Cable to treat all Web content equally, fell short in their bid for the House and Senate, reports CNNMoney

While all supported the idea behind the movement, they were not unanimous in their support of proposed legislation by the FCC.

The FCC, which tried to implement its own rules, but was told it didn’t have the legal authority to do so, had initially planned to push Congress to vote on its proposal in Spetember, but held off due to opposition. Cable companies are strongly opposed to the legislation, which prevents providers from restricting access to sites or applications (such as downloads that swamp bandwidth) – and forbids them from delivering some sites faster than others for a fee.

Content providers, such as Amazon and Yahoo, support the bill. 

Should media companies be grateful to digital distributors for bringing their stuff to the masses? Or should distributors be grateful to the content producers for giving consumers a reason to subscribe?

The answer, of course, is that they’re both benefiting – it’s capitalism at its best. But that doesn’t stop either from complaining to the government that they deserve more.

As Techdirt amusingly observes, the dichotomy is on fully display currently in Canada and the UK. In the former country, the entertainment industry is pushing for laws that require broadband providers to fund local content creation. In the latter, meanwhile, there’s a movement to require the BBC to help fund broadband deployment.

Normally I’d say the market will just sort itself out – whichever side needs the other more will pay if threatened with losing the partnerships. However things get much more complicated when you’re talking about regulations and laws – in which case it becomes a question of who can convince politicians and bureaucrats, be it through rational arguments or lobbying.

Luckily here in the U.S., where the government doesn’t subsidize media nearly as much as in other nations, we don’t have to worry about that particular political war. But the flip side is with a less involved government, we have the issue of big corporations squeezing out the rest of the market. Thus the “Net Neutrality” debate, where some big media companies are happy to pay broadband providers – in return for preferential treatment in delivery that could give them a competitive advantage over content companies with fewer resources.