Apart from slacktivism from my desk (emails to congresscritters, etc.), there’s really not much I can do if someone several servers upstream from me decides to cut the cord. And that’s for any reason – business folds, power outage, DOS attack, act of God, whatever.

I do know that my Mariners fandom has increased a hundredfold in rabidity and data points thanks to all the excellent Mariners blogs (including and especially this one), so I don’t know how my fandom would morph over time if I only had people in meatspace to discuss it with. “No, actually, it doesn’t work that way, because Felix’s walks per 9 innings was… gimme a sec, let me look it up on Fangra…sonuvabitch.”

I’ve done some research, but I still can’t grasp what the effects would be. From my understanding, it is banning plagiarism and piracy (like movies, songs, etc.) I feel like there is more to this though, but I’m not getting it. Can someone explain please?

Particularly the part about their being two sets of legitimate interests that both need to be protected. Obviously, SOPA/PIPA goes way over the line, but the current Wild West environment of the Internet can’t really continue either.

It’s important to remember that the reason bills like this have momentum behind them isn’t as simple as good or evil. Businesses have a right to act (within a reasonable scope) to protect their revenue streams.

Bringing up China as a reason not to enforce copyright anywhere was ridiculous, but I simply played to the example given.