SOPA, PIPA Shelved Indefinitely

Antipiracy bills SOPA, PIPA shelved by Congress. Proving the power of social action on the Internet, the politicians (both Republicans and Democrats) who sponsored the legislation that had the alleged purpose of protecting intellectual property on the net shelved the legislation, at least until after the next election. After watching the description of the legislation on Khan Academy, it occurred to me that, if passed, the legislation would make the providers of Internet services responsible for the alleged defalcations of their users, over which they have little control. The vagueness of the legislation would not, in my opinion, pass constitutional muster anyway. While reading the proposed statutes, it occurred to me that the same argument could be made against newspapers or other old media. Any antipiracy legislation will have to have a demand feature as a prerequisite to a duty to act by the service provider. In fact, don't we already have such legislation, and case law? Of course we do. The SOPA and PIPA legislation is a thinly veiled attempt to disguise a Draconian protection scheme that benefits only large media corporations, and would stifle free enterprise on the Internet.