I was going to try and put something together with more thoughts, but I'm tired and strangely sad.

I love the internet.

Watching this video from the TED Conference on why SOPA/PIPA are such terrible ideas, I realized something that's been bothering me about the anti-SOPA/PIPA side of this issue.

This bill will kill the internet. That's...not true. I don't think, at least. Yes, it would compromise the security by making DNSSEC impossible to implement, but I don't think that would be enough to kill it. Technology is incredibly resilient and able to outsmart those who don't understand it (and most people who do). The internet is Pandora's box - we can never go back to a pre-internet society again, no matter what we become. And if the internet isn't broken by Chinese censorship, I think it's a little silly to claim that American censorship would strike the final blow. There are other countries in the world who could take over as global innovators.

The real danger of this bill, in my view, is the block it strikes to the American character - a character that has already weakened and grown ill over the past few decades. It's a blow to free speech - the tools within could too easily be used against unpopular but legal speech, and even if those tools aren't abused, it punishes law-abiding users for other people's crimes.

And as Clay Shirky points out, it upends the principle of "innocent until proven guilty." It transforms the web into a police state, with websites being forced to monitor all user behavior to make sure there is no illegal activity. It assumes we are criminals until we prove otherwise. It criminalizes several generations of American citizens, as Larry Lessig pointed out in 2007.

And yes, the international impact would be terrible as well. I don't mean to imply that these bills are only problems for the United States, because they do have international ramifications. I just think it's a little arrogant to presume that America alone has the sole power to make or break the internet. (If I'm mistaken, please do correct me.)

The internet is strong, and so is its culture. As a collective entity, we will always find a way around draconian restrictions. They can't kill us, but they can drive us underground. They can foster an internet culture that distrusts legal authority and that wants to divorce itself from geo-political governments.

XKCD put as the hover text over one of their comics:

I'm waiting for the day when, if you tell someone "I'm from the internet," instead of laughing they just ask "Oh, what part?"

More and more, this feels like home to me.



And this does not.



I can't be the only one.