There's No Fixing SOPA And PIPA; Time To Start Over

[Commentary] The sudden Congressional decisions to ditch the very bad intellectual property bills, the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and Protect Intellectual Property Act (PIPA) have raised all sorts of new questions about how discussion around the bills should proceed and, as importantly, how was it the opposition managed to have such a devastating impact on such a powerful lobby as the movie studios and their friends. Those are important and related questions which have been answered in recent days with a lot of speculation. Let’s start with the question of how to proceed from here on in, because the answer to that question will largely explain how we got to this point. Trying to “fix” SOPA and PIPA and all of the bad provisions in those bills is the wrong approach. Conceptually, it’s like trying to build a building starting on the second floor. The most logical way to proceed would be to start building a structure from the foundation and working up from there.