Don't Break the Internet

Two bills now pending in Congress – the “Protect IP Act” (“Protect IP”) in the Senate, the “Stop Online Piracy Act” (“SOPA”) in the House – represent the latest legislative attempts to address online copyright and trademark infringement. Although the bills differ in certain respects, they share an underlying approach and an enforcement philosophy that pose grave constitutional problems and that could have potentially disastrous consequences for the stability and security of the Internet's addressing system, for the principle of interconnectivity that has helped drive the Internet’s extraordinary growth, and for free expression.