Wikipedia has gone dark, and Google – with its huge megaphone – has protested, as well.

Good for them. Hopefully it’ll raise awareness of how this potentially damaging legislation could harm the internet as a whole, just to protect some rights of a minority (copyright holders).

Yes, piracy is a problem – and is wrong. Agreed.

But this is not, in my mind, the answer. To be fair, however, some of the more onerous provisions of the original bill (DNS redirects [blocks?] and so on) have been stripped out. But still, a chilling bill.

Proponents say it’ll be effective, just like the DMCA – but that has been a mess in many ways, as well. For example, reverse engineering can be a felony. So it makes it illegal to – for example – make cheaper laser cartridges that can interact with HP printers. Helps HP, but not the consumer.

Update: Tim Bray – a Canadian – has, as always, a clear-eyed view of this issue.