Forum Post: SOPA update/White House releases a statement

Any effort to combat online piracy must guard against the risk of online censorship of lawful activity and must not inhibit innovation by our dynamic businesses large and small. Across the globe, the openness of the Internet is increasingly central to innovation in business, government, and society and it must be protected. To minimize this risk, new legislation must be narrowly targeted only at sites beyond the reach of current U.S. law, cover activity clearly prohibited under existing U.S. laws, and be effectively tailored, with strong due process and focused on criminal activity. Any provision covering Internet intermediaries such as online advertising networks, payment processors, or search engines must be transparent and designed to prevent overly broad private rights of action that could encourage unjustified litigation that could discourage startup businesses and innovative firms from growing.

We must avoid creating new cybersecurity risks or disrupting the underlying architecture of the Internet. Proposed laws must not tamper with the technical architecture of the Internet through manipulation of the Domain Name System (DNS), a foundation of Internet security. Our analysis of the DNS filtering provisions in some proposed legislation suggests that they pose a real risk to cybersecurity and yet leave contraband goods and services accessible online. We must avoid legislation that drives users to dangerous, unreliable DNS servers and puts next-generation security policies, such as the deployment of DNSSEC, at risk.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2012/01/14/obama-administration-responds-we-people-petitions-sopa-and-online-piracy

This was in response to a petition (signed by tens of thousands of people who vigorously oppose SOPA and it's cousin PIPA). The due process language isn't as robust as I'd like (it's sort of obscure), so complacency is not an option here. It sounds like a good statement, but I guess my trust in Washington is--shall we say--a bit jaded.

I mean, if these guys are really interested in copyright infringement coming from unscrupulous overseas web sites, then why not just tell Google to remove the offending site (after a judge issues an injunction), in the same way it removes sites associated with child porn:

Google has a zero-tolerance policy on child sexual abuse images. We prohibit any advertising related to child sexual abuse images. When we become aware of child sexual abuse images or child pornography anywhere in our search engine results or hosted on our site(s), we remove them and report the incident to the appropriate authorities. Any Google Accounts used to post child sexual abuse images are immediately terminated.

http://www.google.com/familysafety/faq.html

Ass holes in Washington, who can barely use a smart phone, much less understand the first thing about computer science, please don't fuck with what you don't understand. If computers confuse you, go back to fucking school, but until you do (warning: you'll have to take a shit load of calculus, linear algebra, etc.), keep your dumb happy asses out of smart people shit.