But almost no one does, so we frequently get hilarious examples where the very people in charge of policing the Internet for potential copyright violations fall astray of the laws themselves.

Intellectual property is a touchy subject. The Internet loves to steal it, and watchdog groups love to send threatening letters and file lawsuits in response. The problem is that it's really hard not to be a hypocrite when it comes to copyright issues. If you want to have a zero-tolerance policy with others, you'd better damn well exercise one in your own life.

5 The Man Who Sponsored SOPA Stole Pictures for His Website

Don J Schulte and Lamar Smith, via Vice

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Remember when SOPA was going to destroy the Internet, and dammit, we weren't going to take it anymore? If you don't, SOPA was a bill introduced by U.S. Representative Lamar Smith (R-TX) that would give law enforcement officials greatly expanded powers to fight copyright violations online.

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"We're using a broad interpretation of the term 'online'."

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Proponents claimed that it was needed to fight overseas sites that use lax copyright laws in their respective countries as a means to provide American users with an unlimited supply of ill-gotten MP3s and pirated Hollywood hits. Sites like Megaupload and the Pirate Bay, for example.

Opponents claimed that the measure was written so broadly that it meant entire domains could be shut down for even the slightest copyright violation. For example, if you forgot to give the proper credit for one image posted on one page of your site, your whole site could be wiped out forever (in the industry, we call what just happened here foreshadowing).

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"You've Photoshopped penises onto Prince's face for the last time, kid."

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Complaints about the bill from several major sites only prompted angry responses from Smith, who seemed to be under the impression that the only entity that opposed his plan was Google. As stated earlier, though, he was wrong: The entire Internet wanted SOPA stopped, and they weren't above using humiliation to make it happen.

To those ends, a curious little troll at Vice.com scoured Lamar Smith's website in search of copyright violations and found that the credit-happy congressman was using an image taken by photographer DJ Schulte as the background on an archived version of his homepage. After contacting the photographer, it was discovered that, sure enough, the image was being used without permission. That's bad news for a man in the process of building his reputation by policing the Internet for copyright violations like the Prince Rogers Nelson of Congress.