SOPA and PIPA
Every cease-and-desist and DMCA request I’ve received wasn’t fun to get in my inbox, but it allowed me to deal with the issues directly with the copyright holder or using the due process of the court system.
Imagine, instead, a world where a bill like SOPA or PIPA passes. A copyright holder could bypass due process entirely, demanding that search engines stop linking to my sites, ad providers drop me, and force DNS providers not to resolve my domain name. All in the name of stopping piracy.
When drafting a law, just like when writing a computer program, we should always keep in mind how it can be abused and what are the consequences of those abuses. Because sooner or later, it will. Usually sooner than later.
Update (2012-01-21): Joel Spolsky (via John Siracusa):
The Internet seems to ignore legislation until somebody tries to take something away from us… then we carefully defend that one thing and never counter-attack. Then the other side says, “OK, compromise,” and gets half of what they want. That’s not the way to win…that’s the way to see a steady and continuous erosion of rights online.
