This is not a drill. This is the real thing. If you live in the US, your access to the Internet — the greatest medium for the free distribution of information that the world has ever known — will effectively be placed under government control if this bill passes. If you don’t live in the US, this bill, along with the ACTA treaty (another nasty piece of work), will probably place great pressure on your government to create similar censorship measures. Don’t let this happen. The MPAA, the RIAA, and other corporate lobbies have already successfully twisted intellectual property law into something wholly out of step with modern technology (not to mention the Constitution) through the DMCA, the Mickey Mouse Protection Act, and other miserable pieces of legislation that impede and prevent academic research, document preservation, fair use, and creative expression. Don’t let them break the Internet too.
(P.S. Next week’s post: the physics of free lunches.)