Christopher Dodd, chairman of the Motion Picture Association of America, seems to have thrown in the towel on getting either SOPA or PIPA onto the statute books in their current form following this week’s online demos and negative signals from the White House.

The NYT described Dodd and his associates as scrambling to find what could be salvaged. Dodd told the paper he would welcome a summit meeting between Internet companies and content companies, perhaps convened by the White House, that could lead to a compromise.

Dodd reflected that this week’s events showed Washington’s savviest players — not just the motion picture association, but also the United States Chamber of Commerce and the Recording Industry Association of America — had failed in the face of a sudden burst of Web-driven populism.

Dodd was having to admit defeat in a political fight where he had been hampered by his bar on lobbying personally on Capitol Hill – he can’t until 2014 having been a Senator until 2011.

Dodd said that the entire industry was surprised by the intensity of the objections that arose in the last couple of weeks. “This was a whole new different game all of a sudden,” he said.

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