The anti-SOPA protests worked
The big news of the day is that on the day of the blackout protests, 18 Senators announced their opposition to PIPA, the Senate version of the SOPA bill. Most of the newly opposed Senators are Republicans. Sadly, Democrats get a lot of campaign contributions from the entertainment industry, and the entertainment industry desperately wants to be granted even more authority to bully suspected copyright violators.
Killing this terrible bill is great, but there are two broader discussions that really need to take place. The first is about whether attempts to prevent piracy through new laws is worthwhile at all. (I would argue that it is not.) And the second is about how laws like SOPA come about in the first place. For more on that, read about Larry Lessig’s recent work.
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