Dear SOPA and Protect IP

There are so many things wrong with you. I understand that piracy is a problem, and I agree that stopping it would be good. But what you're trying to do will basically destroy the internet as we know it. That seems extreme, but it's not an exaggeration, that's actually what you could cause. Most of the biggest and most important websites, like Facebook and Youtube just to name a couple, could easily be designated as being potentially useful for pirates, and just flat out blocked entirely. The problem is I think most of the people voting on you don't really understand the ramifications this will have on the internet as a whole, and the everyday lives of everyone who uses it. It's simply too extreme, and many innocent websites will be blocked.

Personally, I'm a supporter of the Safe Harbor Act (pretty sure that's what it's called), something that was passed a long time ago, which basically says a website cannot be held responsible for the actions of it's users. So when someone uploads copyrighted stuff to Youtube, the owner can complain, and Youtube usually cooperates (often too well), but Youtube cannot actually get in trouble since they simply provide a video hosting service and did not condone using it for illegal purposes. This approach is the only thing that will allow the internet to operate at it's full potential, since no website can actually control it's users, so if the website could get in trouble websites would have to be much more careful and strict and there'd be plenty of services that simply wouldn't be offered at all because of the risk they'd pose to the owning company.

The rules you're trying to create would not only destroy tons of already established things, but make creating new things on the internet have an inherent risk they don't currently have, so less stuff will be created, and the growth and innovation of everything on the internet would be greatly slowed. And on top of all of these negative effects, you also just plain won't work. Pirates will quickly find ways around the blocks, and continue pirating stuff all the time anyways, leaving you having no real effect on the piracy issue.

So please, for all our sakes, don't pass.
-SF