I completely agree that there need to be some strong laws protecting the Internet. But I think nothing short of a Constitutional amendment will stop future laws like these, though. But I agree after we stop SOPA and PIPA, we'll need to focus on bills that can ensure nothing like SOPA can even be proposed again. There needs to be an "Internet first" stance.
The Internet is probably the most important thing humanity has built so far, and I think we're just at the beginning with this. And our clueless politicians already want to mess around with it to stop a few old business models from failing. And they want to do that by trying to pass a bill a week before Christmas, without any serious debate and disregarding the experts. I think that's very dangerous and foolish.
But I think nothing short of a Constitutional amendment will stop future laws like these, though. But I agree after we stop SOPA and PIPA, we'll need to focus on bills that can ensure nothing like SOPA can even be proposed again.
I expect nothing short of endless vigilance and occasional internet smackdowns of bills like these will prevent them from becoming law.
You can amend the Constitution and pass all the laws you want, but those are just inconveniences that can be overcome with a big enough advertising and legal budget.
They'd have to repeal the relevant law/amendments. I'd prefer the direction to go towards INTERNET FREEDOM rather than INTERNET CONTROL in any case.
If the anti-SOPA movement stops SOPA, there will still be momentum towards INTERNET CONTROL with future bills. In fact, PROTECT-IP is a reincarnation of a former attempt.
I just had a thought: following all of the idiotic "facebook will start charging!" posts, what if they actually posted a note to American users that SOPA would, in fact, force them to do so due to increased legal costs? Pie in the sky, I know, but not so fantastical as to be unrealistic.
Wouldn't it be easier to have sites like Google, Facebook, Twitter, etc. raise awareness by publicly displaying information about SOPA on highly visible parts of their own sites?
As well as having Google remove search results for SOPA supporting organizations or have Facebook remove pages like facebook.com/visa? It's playing dirty, but why not?
Because removing search results for SOPA supporting organizations would be censorship, just as much as SOPA is censorship if it gets accepted AS-IS today.
