I recently was able to attend an interesting Cato/Techfreedom/CEI debate on the unintended consequences of the rogue website crackdown. The specific focus (not surprisingly) was the debate over SOPA/PIPA, but thankfully some of the debate went further back, to discuss how the government and private actors were already using existing law to do questionable things to sites they declared "rogue."

This became even more timely with the Megaupload takedown... which happened about the same time that this panel ended. It was especially nice to see some discussion over the problematic seizures around Dajaz1 and Rojadirecta, as well as the fact that Veoh went bankrupt defending a bogus copyright lawsuit under existing law. These are not "hypotheticals." These are real problems with today's law already. Many of the things people are worried about under SOPA are already possible - SOPA just took them to the next level.