Congress is currently working on a bill that would cause significant alteration of the way the Internet works. Variously called the Protect Intellectual Property Act (the Senate version), the Stop Online Piracy Act (the House version), and the E-PARASITE Act (the House version), this legislation would make it much easier for the government to shut down or block access to Web sites suspected (or merely accused) of committing or facilitating certain copyright or trademark violations.

The bill in its various forms enjoys the support of music and motion-picture industry trade groups, who despite record revenues and profits seem to be almost comically frightened of the potential for pirates to disrupt their revenue streams.

Opponents of the legislation call it “the end of the Internet as we know it” and claim it “would officially bring Internet censorship to the U.S. as a matter of law.”

I support legal protection of intellectual property. I'd be a hypocrite if I didn't – I've collected decades of paychecks based on my generation of intellectual property for various companies. I believe that copyright, trademark, and patent regulations generally do more good than harm.

But SOPA/PIPA is bad law. It goes much too far. It gives government too much power to harm businesses and people before their culpability has been legally established. It criminalizes behavior that benefits the very enterprises the legislation has been drafted to support.

CNET's Molly Wood provides this explanation of the legislation's implications:

SOPA would allow rights-holders to get court orders to take down Web sites or blacklist entire domains based on accusations of infringement. The "infringements" themselves can constitute a single link on a single page of a site, or even an accusation that the site is taking steps to "avoid confirming a high probability" of infringement. Let me translate: if someone, anyone, who holds a copyright or trademark on anything, thinks you're deliberately not doing anything about something they consider infringement, they can get your site taken offline and there's virtually nothing you can do to stop them. What?

There's more, and the "more" is even more insidious. The bill would also allow a rights-holder to send an infringement notice to an ad network like Google or a payment processor like Mastercard or Visa. In that case, with zero legal proof of infringement, the ad networks or payment processors would have five days to stop doing business with the accused site--an accuser can kill the alleged infringer's business, with, again, no proof or legal recourse.

CNET's Larry Downes has written a detailed and objective report on the legislation: If you're inspired to read more, click here. Ars technica's take is here.

The good folks at fightforthefuture.org have set up a Web service that helps you write your Congressional representatives about the bill. If, like me, you'd like to do your part to torpedo the legislation, click here (there's an informative video, too). Or sign the We the People petition at whitehouse.gov by clicking here.

Web recommendation: The good folks at Journalism.org – the Pew Research Center's project for excellence in journalism – have completed a study of how tablet computers have changed the way people read the news. Among the report's findings are demographic details about the people who use tablets. Pew concludes that tablet users are better educated, more likely to be employed, and more wealthy than non-users. Is this information relevant to developers of tablet apps? Sure – it's always good to know more about your target users. The report is fascinating. J.D. say check it out.

J.D. Hildebrand has written hundreds of articles for dozens of publications and online communities dedicated to software development. He once met Salman Rushdie.