SOPA / PIPA

It's been an odd day on the Internet with various sites going offline in protest against the new bills proposed in the US known as SOPA and PIPA. I understand the gist of these bills but I must admit I've just not had time to look in to the details as much as I probably should have. Even though I'm in the UK there are still many websites which are currently hosted in the US including some of my own. Although my main sites are hosted on UK servers of course in Europe we've got the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) and the Digital Ecomomy Act (DEA) to deal with which are not much better. I've been a pirate, I'll admit that, but these days I'm reformed. Sure intellectual property owners have rights but you have to tackle piracy in the right way. I think The Oatmeal described it best, "[SOPA is] like dealing with a lion escaped from a zoo by blasting some kittens with a flamethrower". The Internet needs to stay open and free or it will die. When Napster was shut down people moved to Audiogalaxy, then Kazza & eMule, then on to Bittorrent etc. That's forgetting that all these files come from Usenet and IRC in the first place, all this software has just made it easier for the less technically inclined user. The list goes on and there will always be something new. If DNS comes under government control then there are already people out there planning a "Dark Net" so we can just ignore the locked door and jump through the open window. I don't know what the answer is, but this is not it. Especially when Lamar Smith, author of SOPA, apparently had an uncredited Creative Commons image as the background for his own website. He's not even following his own rules!