A Grim Foreshadowing

Behold: the Internet of 2013.

Oh my god Wikipedia, please never go offline again. That was the worst. For twenty-four hours yesterday we were forced to live without constant access to questionable user-edited information in a terrible preview of the world after SOPA and PIPA. Unfamiliar with what those acronyms mean? Click on the Wikipedia links above and enjoy them while you can because if these things pass and do what everyone's afraid they do, we may be back to trudging to our local library and none of us wants that. Do you remember microfiche? No, of course you don't. That's because the Internet rendered it obsolete, just like human interaction and paying for porn.

The monks who painstakingly converted periodicals into micro-film died out
long ago taking with them the secret of their art.

"The Internet is nice and all, but
shouldn't I be owning it somehow?"

-Some CEO

Look, I'm not sure I fully understand the bills or the rationale behind them, but now that they've personally inconvenienced me I'm pretty sure I should be angry about them. I think they're an attempt to protect copyrights on the Internet by arbitrarily shutting down websites, smashing their servers and then burying the remains in salted earth so that nothing will ever grow again. It's like the people and business who support the bill suddenly realized that they weren't making enough money off of the Internet and see this as an opportunity to convert it from a public space where everyone can play into a massive content-delivery system/money making machine.

Enjoy Frisbee® brand fun,
or get the fuck out.

A dubious analogy? I can do that: Let's say there was a public park that everyone enjoyed. People have picnics, play frisbee and rock out to those giant boom-boxes from the 80's. Now let's say Frisbee® and, I don't know, Metallica (because they would) caught wind of this and lobbied for a bill that would kick people out of the park if they didn't use Frisbee® brand frisbees and license Metallica's music through the proper channels. Also, you could no longer bring picnic baskets. Only Happymeals. At least that's what this sounds like to me, what do I know?

Look, everyone supports intellectual property rights ('cept these guys), and that's cool. But there's got to be a better way to protect them than wrecking the Internet, right? You don't just nuke it from orbit leaving the rest of us to screw around with microfiche like it's the goddamn dark ages.

There, that aught to solve L.A.'s traffic problem.