Why doesn’t Washington understand the Internet? – The Washington Post.

This piece does the best job that I have seen at exploring the underlying issues that create poorly thought out Internet legislation rife with unintended consequences like SOPA and PIPA.

In that regard, the editorial ran on Jan 20 on the Post’s website and Jan 22 in the hard copy paper.

Note that Congress has yet to deal with a 1987 law that renders email left on a 3rd party server, like Gmail, more than 180 days is considered abandoned and may be examined by law enforcement without a warrant.