It was a long fight. I can’t tell you how many times I kept saying that SOPA and PROTECT IP were in trouble. But they’re getting shelved now. Sure, there’s whining about it. And the President still is too cowardly to lead.
Now it’s time to move on to the next step, though, and find a sensible way to attack the foreign infringers, who essentially are free riders on the American copyright system, taking advantage of the scarcity imposed by copyright without themselves respecting the rules that create that scarcity.
You can tell who’s trying to make this into a fight against copyright though, by the way Megaupload is being made out as a victim. When Megaupload in fact was a company that was making big bucks as a place you could stash files for broad distribution without regard for copyright, and they’re rightfully being shut down.
So it’s not surprising that the terror group Anonymous is defending them and attacking the United States of America in the process. This is an anti-American lawless band of thugs that needs to be be made to pay. And they always do get caught. We just have to wonder whether there will be a backlash against an open Internet thanks to that anarchist scum.
I’m glad Marsha Blackburn flipped on SOPA, because she’s making fantastic points on spectrum. FCC management of spectrum holds back even good policies like auctions. Those failures keep spectrum idle, and thus harm the public by creating artificial scarcity. They don’t do the job right, and so now we need to stand over them and tell them what to do. They had a chance, they failed. Read the whole thing.
Google has a long way do go before it earns trust from a lot of people. People aren’t going to forget soon how closely Google allied with Barack Obama, and then how Google allied with the radical left to push for Internet regulation. So Google’s position on SOPA is being met with skepticism from some, and it’s hard to say it’s unwarranted.