i actually did not think much of the stop online piracy act until i heard about it being discussed on the senate floor. why did i not care about it? i’ll tell you. one of the most compelling arguments someone posted against sopa was the idea that “if you upload a video of your baby crawling around with a jason mraz song as its soundtrack, it could be taken down.” and i was like, yes. that’s a good act. who is opposed to this, people who think fan remixes of law and order footage set to sarah mclachlan’s “i will remember you” is art?

but no, this is what got me scared:

“Maybe we should ask some actual nerds how this thing is going to work,” said Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah).

i’m scared that (1) the people deciding on this bill don’t actually understand how anything works, and (2) they think that the people who do know how it works are a little tiny community of weirdo nerds.

even if i don’t like jason mraz or footage of your baby, this is a bad idea

edit: jonathan corrects me with this

The correction is, that if someone uploads a video of a baby crawling around with a jason mraz song as its soundtrack to your website, Jason Mraz can have your website blocked from the internet, with no due process. There is already a bit of a blegh about ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement got much too cool of an abbreviation) doing similar: taking possession of domain names that are accused of piracy, including a few that were eventually admitted as mistakes.

yipe