The stop the piracy bills before the US (eg., the PROTECT IP Act in the Senate and the Stop Online Piracy Act, or SOPA, in the House) would do more harm than good to cybersecurity, the Internet economy, and online free expression.

SOPA aims to empower the Justice Department to go after websites that allegedly infringe on copyright, and doing it on the Internet’s domain name layer. Consequently, under these bills even general-purpose social-media sites such as Flickr with no bad intent could be tagged as theft sites "facilitating" infringement -- simply by providing the platforms for users' content. If passed the US government could do such things as shut down YouTube if it contained "pirated video"; or force Google to not link to sites that may allow one to download illegal content.

There are two visions of the future in conflict here. In the corporate scenario of Hollywood and the music industry the top-down order and control are restored, and the disruptive chaos of the Internet is repressed. In another, society accepts some messiness in return for unleashing the amazing collective power of the digitally networked pod users.