Which raises the question: where was the president's leadership three months ago? Still, given Obama's soft record on protecting civil liberties, his resistance to SOPA is a welcome change — and in an election year, the tech industry should remember that the president will need all the help he can get. The biggest gift they could give him is a redoubled effort to curb online piracy, which has helped to gut the music and film industries. The proposed bills are too vague and go too far, but their failure does not erase the need for creative and cooperative solutions to preventing blatant international piracy. The same small businesses that would have borne the brunt of SOPA and PIPA — the ones who cannot afford legal departments and collection agencies — are often the most vulnerable to IP theft, which reaches far beyond Hollywood movies and Top-40 pop hits.
The lesson of SOPA and PIPA, for people who care about and understand the Internet, has been that when it comes to regulating essential technological infrastructure, government is dumb, ineffectual, and dangerous. (Somewhere, an iPhone liberal is tweeting: "This must be how Republicans feel all the time!") The other lesson is this: had it not been for the grassroots and netroots activism that shone a bright light on the farce of a process that got us within a floor vote of Web-censorship Armageddon, we might be in a very dark place right now.
Ultimately, the future of Internet freedom will be only as stout as the populist movements that form to defend it. Syracuse University Internet scholar Milton Mueller puts it succinctly: "There can be no cyberliberty without a political movement to define, defend, and institutionalize individual rights and freedoms on a transnational scale." The time to build that movement is now.
Related:
President Obama, Award-worthy, Tax time?, More 
- President Obama
In retrospect, it all seems of a piece: suitably fitting, almost ordained.
- Award-worthy
The amount of research that Jason Notte conducted for his extensive article on the surge in suicides in the military is worthy of a Pulitzer Prize.
- Tax time?
State House of Representatives leaders have served the Commonwealth well with their austere new budget: they have shown us the tremendous sacrifices we will need to make, and the drastic cuts that will be put into effect, if we don't raise new revenues.
- Boston's Severin problem
The questions raised by the Severin incident have a philosophical and moral resonance that has been touched upon only in passing.
- Art appreciation
The recent Phoenix editorial on state-government funding for arts and culture highlighted many of the challenges we face as we try to meet our aspirations as a community amidst a very difficult economic environment.
- How's Obama doing?
Politics, an old cliché holds, is the art of the possible. Achieving the possible is a matter of power. And in a media-saturated democracy, power flows to those with good poll numbers.
- How is Obama doing?
In response to a question from Oprah Winfrey about how he would grade his time in office, President Barack Obama gave himself a "solid B-plus."
- A fool for everyone
Time to dispose of a few inconsequential gubernatorial candidates.
- Impeach John Roberts
It is time for an enterprising and courageous member of the US House of Representatives to file articles of impeachment against the chief justice of the United States Supreme Court, John Roberts. The charge: lying under oath.
- The Phoenix cleans up at NENPA
Was 2009 a good year for newspapers?
- Political pig pile
For some time now, we at Casa Diablo have been aware of what is either a heinous conspiracy involving the timing of local news revelations or just another unfair law of nature.
- Less
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The Editorial Page
, editorial, SOPA
