Philippe Dauman: A 'Mob Mentality' Killed PIPA and SOPA

Viacom CEO Philippe Dauman defended the controversial copyright legislation known as PIPA as "reasonable" and said a "mob mentality" damaged efforts to pass it.

our editor recommends

The SOPA War: How to Fix Hollywood's Image Problem (Opinion)

The SOPA War: A Frantic Call, an Aborted Summit, and Dramatic New Details on How Hollywood Lost

Neil Gaiman, Trent Reznor, Andy Samberg Slam SOPA, PIPA in Open Letter

Speaking at the D: Dive Into Media conference in Laguna Niguel on Tuesday, Dauman said that the House's SOPA, the Stop Online Piracy Act, was so thoroughly demonized that it made passage of the Senate's PIPA, Protect IP Act, too difficult a task.

"I think the bill that would have emerged would have been very reasonable," said Dauman. "It became almost religious dogma that any legislation built around the process would have broken the Internet and created cesnorship around the world."

PIPA and SOPA would have, in a nutshell, required that Web sites not link to sites "dedicated to the theft of U.S. property." The language also put restrictions on online advertising and credit card payments and made further demands on record keeping, making the would-be laws unpalatable to Wikipedia, Google and other popular sites that rallied their users to oppose the legislation.