You really shouldn't trivialize this. Even if I can't convince you of the detriment these bills would cause, you can't pretend this is just the geeks flipping out over nothing. There are a lot of MAJOR companies actively lobbying for both sides. Hundreds of websites are going to black out tomorrow, including some huge names. Heck, even Google has thrown their weight in and announced that they're going to protest the bill on their homepage. To my knowledge this sort of thing has never happened before.

Also, this is nowhere near over, as you seem to be saying. SOPA, which was tabled for a bit, has just been revived. PIPA goes to the floor for a vote in 7 days. Oh, and about the blackouts? Most of them were formulated/planned before the white house's announcement. Guess what, though? Google, Scribd, Wordpress and a lot of other big sites joined the protest AFTER the Obama administration had already come out against the bills. Clearly, there are some major powers out there that don't think this is anywhere near "over."



That's just the thing; there's already a LOT of legislation out there! The entertainment industry has enormous censorship powers online. How many times have you gone to watch a video, only to see "this video has been removed due to copyright violations?" Such things don't require anything more than a request! Heck, arstechnica, a major tech blog with over 10 million unique viewers per month, lost their official Facebook page for several days due to an anonymous copyright complaint that didn't specify the infringing content. How about that? There is more than enough legislation in place.

Let's move on, though, and talk about your comment regarding the White House's request for "what would be right?" There is, of course, nothing wrong with them asking that question. It doesn't make sense, though, to pass a bad bill just because there's no other solution on the table. The current situation, flawed though it may be, is preferable to the SOPA/PIPA bills. The overwhelming opinion among those not connected to the entertainment/content industry is that this bill will cost the economy far more than it saves. It doesn't make sense to pass something if the "solution" does more harm than good!



Wait, what? "National vulnerabilities to espionage?" Neither SOPA nor PIPA have any meaningful impact on "national security."



There would be zero impact if the US government took its systems offline, except for the websites they directly operate (.gov and .mil sites, primarily). The government does not own or operate any of the internet's important infrastructure. It does maintain final approval over the root DNS zone, but that's only a regulatory thing that it won't let go of, not a service provided to help the internet stay afloat.