I've been making some noise (sometimes illegible) about the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), one of several new legislative initiatives being pushed by the corporate entertainment lobby to suppress "piracy" - but one that tampers with the Internet's very structure, and would essentially "criminalize linking," as Google's CEO warns. The US legislators now mulling over SOPA have taken a break for the holidays. Meanwhile, a resourceful open-source programmer has come up with an add-on for Firefox that would render SOPA ineffectual.

“I feel that the general public is not aware of the gravity of SOPA and Congress seems like they are about to cater to the special interests involved, to the detriment of Internet, for which I and many others live and breathe,” DeSopa developer T Rizk explained to TorrentFreak.
“It could be that a few members of congress are just not tech savvy and don’t understand that it is technically not going to work, at all. So here’s some proof that I hope will help them err on the side of reason and vote SOPA down."

Here's hoping similar add-ons come along for other browsers. For more on this story, see:

Dolan, Eric W. "Internet circumvents anti-piracy bill before it even passes." Raw Story 20 Dec. 2011.