Stop SOPA. Save the internet.

Note: PIPA and SOPA are essentially the same bills. One before the House, the other in the Senate.

So, what's so wrong with these bills? In a nutshell, they severely limit freedom of speech in a vain attempt to protect the profits to be derived from ownership of media distribution rights.

It is as if we discovered a magic fountain that creates new wealth, communities, and personal and political empowerment called 'the internet', and Congress wants to shut it down merely because some of the people who own the water rights under the fountain don't want anyone drinking any of their water for free.

Our Constitutional and human rights must never be contingent upon, or secondary to anybody's property rights. If freedom of speech damages someone's property rights: too damn bad.

Property rights are secondary to the foundational rights that make us a free society, and must always give way when there is a conflict.

Clearly, there is a conflict between the desire of the owners and distributors of intellectual property (also known as culture), and those who wish to use those cultural properties in their private and public communications.

Giving the owners and distributors the right to cut off those communications and thereby censor others is not the answer. The solution is to recognize that these different rights are not fully reconcilable: the rights of property must give way to the public's superior rights as citizens and human beings.

SOPA and PIPA take exactly the opposite position, subordinating the rights of Americans to whims of cultural property owners and distributors, and killing the common carrier legal treatment of the internet providers along the way.

These are bad bills, bought and paid for by corporate contributions. This law is wildly against the public interest, and it is yet another sad demonstration of just how far our corporate-owned Congress has strayed from serving the public interest that these bills are likely to pass.

So stand up and be counted. The only thing that can stop the corporate greed these bills serve is a howl of protest from the real people these bills will harm.

NEW POSTS WILL CONTUNUE TO APPEAR BELOW. THIS POST WILL REMAIN UNTIL AFTER THE CONGRESSIONAL VOTE.