sopa

Here is something I got in my inbox today. It is telling me to sign a petition but I didn't do it. Instead, I am simply leaving everything the way it is now:
(the email I received below)

We’ve all had the good fortune to found Internet companies and nonprofits in a regulatory climate that promotes entrepreneurship, innovation, the creation of content and free expression online.

However we’re worried that the PROTECT IP Act and the Stop Online Piracy Act — which started out as well-meaning efforts to control piracy online — will undermine that framework.

These two pieces of legislation threaten to:

• Require web services, like the ones we helped found, to monitor what users link to, or upload. This would have a chilling effect on innovation;
• Deny website owners the right to due process of law;
• Give the U.S. Government the power to censor the web using techniques similar to those used by China, Malaysia and Iran; and
• Undermine security online by changing the basic structure of the Internet.

We urge Congress to think hard before changing the regulation that underpins the Internet. [then there are a list of signatories like Ariana H, etc.]

Looks like I'd better explain my reasoning, huh?
Well, here goes: our society is supposed to based on balance, a balance achieved through competing interests. That is the whole theory of the market. But if we continually "intervene" in things before they play out there is no balancing process. We can only act after the effect has already registered.
     If you pre-empt the processes that are objectively "trying" to get themselves played out then you will never get the result that creates a stable or viable society. The actual balancing-out process is altered.
     For example, I have a very small (in readership) blog. I never check the readership anyways, but I don't think anybody much reads it or whatever. So, let us say that this new law is not good. Let us say it is so bad that even my little home-made blog gets shut down because I quoted somebody or I copied something and I did not pay royalties or whatever these persons in favor of the bill are trying to do.
     That is the cause. Me and thousands of others would then know just how bad this world really is, and we would finally really do something.
     But what if the cause were never created? What if some "compromise" bill got passed and we never got to experience what these persons who want the internet regulation bill wanted us to experience? Then we would never know how bad their ideas really are.

     It is not like everybody will die if the SOPA bill gets passed. Therefore, since we will not die immediately, we have to let social processes play out. You should not interfere with it. When everybody's blog gets shut down by this bad law, then we might really see some social activism!!!