January 18, 2012, 7:00 AM — Google, Wikipedia and other major Internet players will go through with protests today that were planned as ways to signal their opposition to the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), which has been shelved and is probably dead.
Protesting something that's already been cancelled would normally be a complete waste of time, or a triumphalist waste of time dancing on the grave of something terrible you helped kill.
SOPA isn't completely dead, however; it's simply withdrawn until either popular consensus supports it (as its sponsors prefer to describe its condition) or until hell freezes over (the way everyone else prefers to describe it).
SOPA also has a bigger, badder brother that poses most of the same dangers as the original, but is dressed in a slightly nicer suit and has a much better chance than the boisterously unpopular SOPA, unless protests like those planned for today and extensive letter-writing campaigns convince the Senate to kill it.
The Senate's version of SOPA, the Protect IP Act (PIPA) is just as restrictive and just as slavishly devoted to the exclusive benefit of industries based on the control of copyright, at the expense of ordinary people.
PIPA just isn't quite as obvious about how bad it really is.
The advantage of living in the Senate
Newscasters consistently call the Senate the more "mature" and "stable" house of Congress only because its members are elected every six years rather than every two. They're not any smarter or more mature than members of the House, they're just not as close to losing their jobs, so they can afford to be a little less frantic.
So, when the House runs around like a chicken with its head cut off, the Senate strikes a dignified pose and orates about the deplorable conditions that lead some to cut the heads off chickens and the brave determination of the chickens who choose to continue running around with no heads.
It doesn't make any more sense, or accomplish anything at all. It just sounds a lot more decorous; like a UFO conspiracy theorist with a good haircut and a nice suit rather than overalls and an aluminum-foil fedora.
The ominous difference in this case is that the Senate is less prone to take up or drop some new obsession quickly than the House.
