During my 4-part series write up on SOPA, I approached it with a neutral tone.  I was hearing from everywhere that it was a horrible piece of legislation, but I wanted to find out for myself.  The goal was to look at it from the technical perspective and compare it to what’s going on today from the abuse angle, and then look at it from the non-technical ramifications.  Were the decries from everywhere overheated rhetoric?  Or was there substance?

I then wanted to look at some of the criticisms and see whether or not they are valid.  I have long since learned that if you’re firmly attached to one side of the debate, it becomes emotional.  Once it becomes emotional, it doesn’t matter whether or not you are right or wrong; you just hold firmly to your position.  In the past, I have done this very thing which is why I tried to avoid looking at it from the point of view that “SOPA is bad!” or “We need this to stop online piracy!”

I see from one of my commenters that I’ve been accused of being a shill for industry.  I guess that comes from the subject line of my blog post not coming out against the legislation.  It also comes with the territory of writing about controversial topics.

I wasn’t explicit about which way I leaned in my blog posts, although if you read carefully you can figure it out.

• I said that some criticisms were spurious, but I also said others were valid.
• I said that the entertainment industry is going to have to change their business model.
• I said that cracking down on copyright infringement would make the Internet boring, and I then posted a clip to a piece of copyrighted material.

Without resorting to hyperbole and looking at both sides, you should know where I stand.