Sen. Ron Wyden: "You can't come up with sensible Internet policy on the fly"

    Wednesday's protests against the bills (in which Google, Wikipedia, 
    Ars Technica, and other sites took part) was "a day for the history 
    books," Wyden said, one that will "change permanently the way citizens 
    communicate with their elected officials."

It seemed like one of the goals of the Occupy movements was to reduce corporate influence in politics. It's somewhat ironic that there's overlap between the people who support the Occupy movements and those that are glad that Google, Wikipedia, Ars Technica, and other sites stepped up to influence this political situation.

Understandably, we're in this mess because of corporate influences like the MPAA who helped fund the congressmen who supported the bill. But if you were truly against corporate influence, you wouldn't be happy that Google got involved.

In my mind, an underlying problem hindering any bill that purports to enforce IP rights on the internet is the judiciary. Almost be definition, laws such as SOPA/PIPA and whatever else will be evaluated by judges, therefore changing (or, rather, more precisely defining) terms within the law. The vagueness and ambiguity within SOPA and PIPA was the big problem. But until our judges (and, frankly, lawyers) understand the ramifications that poorly reasoned decisions could have on the internet as a whole, this problem will continue, likely regardless of how tightly drafted the bill is. We have a separate bar, and mostly separate courts, for many IP law issues, so a focus should be placed on educating judges and lawyers in this realm--or maybe even creating a new court system for these issues specifically.

If our elected officials don't understand these laws, there is little hope that (often) elderly judges will be able to not only understand them, but interpret them in such a way that they effect their narrow purpose.

Well that certainly sounds reasonable. Maybe I'm just being overly cynical, but I'm wondering if there's a catch to this.