The Republican Study Committee delighted the netroots community on Friday when it issued a policy brief on copyright law that was friendly to their views.

Fast forward 24 hours.

The conservative group retracted the report on Saturday, setting off a firestorm on tech blogs.

“These are very odd circumstances,” said Gigi Sohn, president of Public Knowledge, a public policy group.  

The paper, authored by RSC staffer Derek Khanna, suggested that copyright law is too tilted toward protecting content owners, and should be changed to allow for greater flexibility in sharing, shorten copyright terms and punish false claims. The tech community hailed the brief from the conservative policy shop, which is not known for backing such proposals.

“The Republican Study Committee released a report on Friday that is so brilliant and visionary it's difficult for me to believe it was written by Republicans,” a Daily Kos blogger wrote Saturday evening.

The retraction sparked an equal measure of consternation.

“Why did the RSC retract its awesome paper on copyright?” tweeted Patrick Ruffini, a Republican political consultant who helped lead the battle against online piracy legislation.

An RSC spokesman said Sunday the brief was retracted because it did not balance various views on copyright law.

“This Policy Brief presented one view among conservatives on U.S. copyright law. Due to an oversight in our review process, it did not account for the full range of perspectives among our members,” RSC spokesman Brian Straessle said in an email statement. “It was removed from the website to address that concern. I know some want to point fingers elsewhere, but the simple fact is that we screwed up, we admitted it, and we hope people will now use this opportunity to engage in polite and serious discussion of copyright law.”

Sohn and other tech activists suspect that the entertainment industry weighed in on the report after it was published, though no one from the industry has said anything publicly about it.

Sohn said that the industry should participate in a debate over the scope of copyright law.

“The debate over the proper balance of copyright law is one that is going to take place whether Hollywood likes it or not,” Sohn said. “They can either engage with it in an honest way, or they can stick their head in the sand, but this is going to happen.”

Neither the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) nor the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) immediately responded to requests for comment on Sunday.

This article first appeared on POLITICO Pro at 3:38 p.m. on November 18, 2012.