Passing thought #4: Coming attractions

Yet another thing of which I'm sure you're aware is how GoDaddy stumbled all over itself, reversing its support of SOPA and PIPA in the wake of over 70,000 of customers moving their websites to a different domain. (An amusing sidebar was one "expert," not linked here, who insisted it wasn't the boycott that caused GoDaddy to double back, it was the "public outcry." Right, like corporations have not long shown that they don't give a shit about "public outcries" that do not affect their bottom line.)

You may also know that the Heritage Foundation, in one of those left-right-overlap-in-odd-ways things, has come out against SOPA, arguing that it

enforces private property rights at the expense of other values, such as innovation on the Internet, security of the Internet, and freedom of communication.

So this post is really just an excuse to remind you that

the U.S. Senate will debate a controversial Hollywood-backed copyright bill as soon as senators return in January.

A vote on the Protect IP Act, a close cousin of the Stop Online Piracy Act, or SOPA, will be held January 24, thanks to a last-minute push by Majority Leader Harry Reid,

who called PIPA "extremely important" and hoped it would be passed in "a productive couple of days" (translation: can be rushed through).

Uh-huh. So on this he decides to be Mr. Tough Guy. Terrific.

Footnote, It Would Be Funny If It Wasn't So Serious Div.: A new free app for Android allows users to scan the barcode of a product to see if the manufacturer has endorsed SOPA.