Lamar Smith, the chief sponsor of SOPA, announced today that he is pulling the bill “until there is wider agreement on a solution.”

Coming down after widespread protest on the Internet on Wednesday by Wikipedia, Reddit and other websites the world over, Smith reversed his stance just two days after he told The Wall Street Journal that he didn’t plan to back down on SOPA, and informing the newspaper he expected to “move forward” with the bill in February.

The websites that staged blackout signaled their displeasure with the bill by going dark and not allowing any content to be utilized. That day, several Congressmen dropped their support for SOPA and its Senate counterpart, PIPA. As of this moment, PIPA has been taken off the table for now. While Wikipedia and cohorts went dark, an alarmingly few popular websites (Facebook and YouTube to name a few) stayed out of the blackout altogether. Although Facebook did not go dark for SOPA, the company has expressed its opposition to the bill. On Wednesday, Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg comments his thoughts on SOPA, calling the legislation “poorly thought out.”

“I have heard from the critics and I take seriously their concerns regarding proposed legislation to address the problem of online piracy,” Smith (R-Texas) said. “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.”

Thanks Mashable  for passing along the info.