SOPA and PIPA
No, it's not the name of some demented kids' TV show, and if you're clueless about SO PA and PI PA I really want to ask where the fuck you've been. Why? Because I'm cranky and an arsehole, but that's another matter for another day. (Plus Twitter's been all over SOPA and PIPA.) Those two bills - the Stop Online Piracy Act and the PROTECT IP Act - have been introduced in America, ostensibly to, you know, stop that dangerous activity that is online piracy...by forcing search engines to remove links to sites that infringe copyright and stopping the domain name from resolving to the IP address, among other things. And all this is on the word of whoever says "This site infringes copyright". Right. Three things to deal with here, in ascending order of importance: piracy, burden of proof and censorship. My personal views on piracy are that I genuinely don't care, in fact, I'm all for people pirating things and disseminating information and...