Congress Continues Its Crusade Against a Free and Open Internet

In case you thought SOPA was defeated, here's a reminder that it has merely been turned into a zombie bill that cannot be killed via traditional means.  From Geek:

Two years ago, major websites such as Wikipedia and Reddit blacked out their services as a form of digital protest against SOPA, the infamous Stop Online Piracy Act . . . Eventually, the widespread outrage over the bill was acknowledged and Congress knocked it off. Various forms of SOPA attempted to make a comeback since the original proposal back in 2011, but none have made it through. Now, though, SOPA might be making a comeback, but in a much sneakier fashion.

On Thursday, the House Judiciary Committee met to discuss copyright reform, but rather than redesign SOPA, it is instead taking the more sinister route of voluntary commitments from individual entities to comply with a ruleset similarly sinister to SOPA.  

In other words, the old SOPA policies would be administered on a voluntary basis, meaning the rule of law on the issue would be outsourced to the arbitrary policies of copyright fundamentalists.