The Department of Justice shut down the website MegaUpload after being charged with committing copyright violations. This comes just a day after many websites, such as Wikipedia and Reddit, “blacked out” in protest of legislation in front of Congress that would give the government more power to preemptively shutdown websites that are suspected of being involved in Internet piracy and copyright violations.
If anything, it would seem that the case involving MegaUpload shows that legislation like SOPA and PIPA is unnecessary. The government already has the power to take action on those types of crimes.
Handing the government more power to do something they already can do is ludicrous, and should make one consider if there is ever an amount of power that the government would be happy having.
Any reasonable person should be able to point to this example as proof positive that any request for more power to deal with these matters is unnecessary.
Adam Bitely is the Editor-in-Chief of NetRightDaily.com. You can follow him on Twitter at @AdamBitely.