SOPA / PIPA

First impressions often come from a name. Take the Patriot Act. How could anyone possibly criticize something that so obviously exists solely for the enhancement and protection of the most important principles of our country? Never mind that it strips privacy rights away from its citizens.

Enter the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Protect IP Act (PIPA). (There are two proposals because these days the Senate and House can’t even agree on what to name their work.)

Stopping piracy and protecting copyright are as high minded as motherhood and apple pie. Who could possibly have a problem with legislation to further these fine goals?

You don’t have to look long to find out. For example, and this is one of many examples, visit the Electronic Frontier Foundation website and you’ll see this explanation:

These bills are targeted at "rogue" websites that allow indiscriminate piracy, but use vague definitions that could include hosting websites such as Dropbox, MediaFire, and Rapidshare; sites that discuss piracy such as pirate-party.us, p2pnet, Torrent Freak, torproject.org, and ZeroPaid; as well as a broad range of sites for user-generated content, such as SoundCloud, Etsy, and Deviant Art. Had these bills been passed five or ten years ago, even YouTube might not exist today — in other words, the collateral damage from this legislation would be enormous.

There are already laws and procedures in place for taking down sites that violate the law. These acts would allow the Attorney General, and even individuals, to create a blacklist to censor sites when no court has found that they have infringed copyright or any other law.

I made the mistake of trying to do my civic duty and express my opinion to my Senators.

One of them hasn’t even bothered to respond.

The other sent me the boilerplate response for PIPA comments. Basically it said, “I am a co-sponsor of this fine piece of legislation, and if you’re opposing it, you must be a dirty thief and maybe even a hacker.”

Since the White House came out today against the current bills, I am afraid that Republicans will work even harder for their passage. I hope that better judgment will prevail.