Every time a terrible bill like COICA or PIPA gets exposed for what it would actually do to the Internet, large rights holders reinvent it slightly, lay some bad dubstep over it, and call it something you can dance to.

This time it's the Stopping Online Piracy Act—SOPA for short. SOPA is a bill coming out of the House that is a compliment to the Senate's PROTECT-IP abomination. It's entirely unlike PROTECT-IP, in that while it does all the same things and worse, it phrases them differently… so you won't notice.

Good news, everybody! The courts have upset music label EMI with a ruling that not only preserves the DMCA safe harbor, but acknowledges basic laws of physics.

Finally, rights holder and ISPs have found a foolproof way to punish you, their nefarious customer. The MPAA, RIAA, etc. have struck a deal with five of the largest ISPs in America on file sharing. It's perfect. No due process, judicial review, or evidence. It assumes you're guilty until proven innocent. And you get to pay for the whole thing!

In their ongoing quest to punch every puppy they can find, rights holders have turned to suing those most rapacious of pirates, professors. Academic publishers are asking a judge in Georgia for an injunction against Georgia State University for a liberal fair-use policy. What these publishers are objecting to is unapproved and unpaid-for book and article excerpts in class materials—essentially quoting and anthologizing. They want everything that can be paid for to be paid for.