As to the first, I think you just explained a great deal of why these bills would impose criminal penalties (though your "current laws are working and the media only wants new ones because current laws are not working" argument was good, too.) As to the second... um, what? If someone asks a third party for the IP of a site taken offline for violating US law, gets a fake IP and winds up with a virus, maybe that is a valuable object lesson. I mean, that kind of thing is already fairly ubiquitous online, but I am pretty sure the fault for that lies solely with people disseminating viruses online, and people can avoid most of them by avoiding shady links and sites.


Yeah, once again, good luck using that argument to convince Congress of anything except that people who think piracy should be ignored think piracy should be ignored (which we and they pretty much knew already.) I remember the Secret Service shutting down Steve Jackson Games as well as you do, and you cannot even convince ME things are fine as they are: How do you expect to convince Congressmen? Even I conceded Big Media is guilty of alarmist absolutism (which I do not, entirely) the antidote to that is not a different flavor of alarmist absolutism.

There WILL be a new anti-piracy law. Instead of forfeiting credibility with and thus relevance to legislators enacting it, why not try giving them the constructive feedback Obama explicitly requested. They still may not implement the legislation you prefer (seems likely, since you appear to prefer none,) but if you do not even tell them what you want they CANNOT implement it.