This is the first issue of the Curmudgeon’s Corner blog. I intend to use this platform to look at the foolishness, foibles and follies of internet marketers. We can probably learn as much from looking at mistakes as we can from looking at success, and I want to make sure these lessons aren’t missed.

In this first post, I want to comment on the proposed SOPA law in the United States, and the spreading protests from people around the country. Its goal is to protect authors and publishers from theft of their intellectual property. That’s a laudable goal. I support, and even applaud, the goal.

The issue is the complexity of the problem, complexity so great that it almost defies a solution. The solution isn’t what is in the proposed law. It offers a meat cleaver where even a surgeon’s scalpel would have difficulty excising the cancer, without harming the body.

There will be thefts that slip through the cracks in whatever laws are drafted, but the law must not punish the innocent, even at the expense of letting some guilty get away.

However, I didn’t black out IM News Watch today in protest. Our readers deserve better; they deserve our continued delivery of the news, including the news of SOPA.

I was impacted today by the websites that chose to shut down in protest of SOPA. Most of you probably felt the impact, too. It slowed me down, and forced me to wait until tomorrow to complete some of my work.

I didn’t want to do that to our readers.

I like what Google did, continuing to offer its search function to seekers while dramatically portraying its concern with the law by blocking out its logo on the search page, indicating its concern over the SOPA impact on search engines.

I am not as creative as Google, but I, too, want to register my concern, just in a less intrusive way.

Phil

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