Two ugly, Hollywood-sponsored, so-called anti-internet-piracy bills are winding their way through the Congressional poop chute with the prejudicial names SOPA (Stop Internet Piracy) and PROTECT IP. Critics of the bills such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation say they are unconscionably broad and will threaten the "safe harbor" provisions of the current digital copyright laws. (Briefly put, an Internet Service Provider is presumed not to be infringing copyright even though one of its customers might be, and must first respond to a takedown notice before any drastic action is taken against the provider, whereas SOPA allows the government to tell the ISP how to do its business just on some movie rat's say so.) Per the EFF:
As drafted, the legislation would grant the government and private parties unprecedented power to interfere with the Internet's domain name system (DNS). The government would be able to force ISPs and search engines to redirect or dump users' attempts to reach certain websites' URLs...
It gets worse: Under SOPA's provisions, service providers (including hosting services) would be under new pressure to monitor and police their users’ activities. While PROTECT-IP targeted sites “dedicated to infringing activities,” SOPA targets websites that simply don’t do enough to track and police infringement (and it is not at all clear what would be enough)...
Whether something infringes copyright is the grayest of legal gray areas, which makes it an ideal tool for social control (when the Putin government in Russia wants to shut down a critic these days it claims "software piracy"). These US bills result from an unholy alliance of entertainment moguls upset about losing their monopolies on people's time and the usual shady government operatives who want to stanch the free flow of information. The public hasn't quite awakened yet to how bad the bills are. (As in "the end of the internet as we know it.")
Congresscritters are trying to ram the House bill through before Christmas so please take a minute to contact your Senators and Representatives: the EFF has an online email form and contact info.