On SOPA and PIPA

As some readers will know, many web sites and blogs "blacked out" yesteday in protest of pending legislation that aims to address the massive copyright violations the Internet facilitates.  I have not followed this closely, but for those who are interested, this paper by three intellectual property/cyber-law scholars is probably a good place to start.  In general, it seems to me that cyber-space is under-regulated by the law, which explains why it has become a repository for so much garbage, defamation, and invasion of privacy, as well as copyright violations.  (It's a shame, but predictable, that only the latter really gets the attention of Congress.)  SOPA and PIPA may be problematic responses to some of these problems, but the knee-jerk opposition of cyber-libertarians, who readily turn a blind eye to all the ugliness of cyber-space, is itself suspect in my view.