SOPA/PIPA

One interesting thing about this whole crappy situation: This is one of the few times in the past few years I've seen people who leaned left and people who leaned right united in their opposition to something.

(Apparently politicians and some Hollywood types are the main supporters of this. Or so it seems.).

This is one of those things...this just shows the overreach of the government. This is just another example of someone going "SOMEONE MUST DO SOMETHING" and some politicians get the idea that "DOING SOMETHING" means passing a very broad-brush law.

If I'm reading things right, in fact, what most people WANTED done (that is, stopping piracy from OVERSEAS based sites - where most of the piracy seems to be happening) isn't even covered by the bill. Idiocy. And even though it's been "modified," (to apparently take out the IP-grabbing part), still, it just needs to be trashed and to go away.

If so many people, and especially so many people in the tech world despise this, and point out that there are going to be giant unintended consequences that will actually hurt a lot of people - perhaps even some this bill is claiming to help - why won't Congress listen and at least let it die, if not totally vote it down?

This reminds me a bit of that "Consumer Protection" bill of a few years ago - remember when some Chinese-made toys (even by big companies like Mattel) showed up with unacceptable levels of things like lead and cadmium? And Something Had To Be Done? And if the original bill had passed as planned, most thrift stores would stop selling used children's clothing, and some libraries were concerned that a lot of their children's books would be in violation and would have to be scrapped? Same kind of thing...a situation where laws that were probably already in place were broken, but to try to punish the lawbreakers, new legislation was proposed that would punish many innocent people.