What most of these discussions overlook is that the Internet is like an amplifier--it boosts the signal and the noise. I'll have more to say on this analogy below.

NOTE: in the following, I am not saying or intending to imply that there was anything good about SOPA. I'm just talking about how people acquired their knowledge of SOPA.

Consider the recent SOPA events. As far as I could see, the vast majority of people participating in online activism on that issue were not actually informed. They were there because a few sites told them it was bad. They did not check up on that and independently verify before jumping on the bandwagon.

There was no qualitative difference here between them, and the people that were showing up at town halls to complain about "death panels" in the health care law because some talk radio host or Fox commentator told them that's what the law had.

You can see a similar thing starting with the EEA (Enemy Expatriation Act). Here's what it actually does. Right now, there is a law that says that if you commit any of seven enumerated acts with the intent of relinquishing your nationality, then you can, if it is proven you voluntarily did the act with that intent, lose your citizenship.

The EEA adds an eighth item to that list: "engaging in, or purposefully and materially supporting, hostilities against the United States", and it adds a definition: "For purposes of this section, the term ‘hostilities’ means any conflict subject to the laws of war".

This bill is remarkably simple--about 1/2 of a page. The text is here: http://www.govtrack.us/congress/billtext.xpd?bill=h112-3166

It is modifying 8 USC 1481, which while longer (maybe two pages), is written in fairly plain language. It looks to me like it is basically closing some gaps--the existing law seems to have been written for a world where hostilities against nations came from other nations.

It does not provide a way for your citizenship to be taken, but rather adds another option by which you can renounce it. (I believe the Supreme Court has ruled that citizenship cannot be taken as a form of punishment, which is why, I suspect, the current law is written to have a clear intent requirement).

Yet I've seen at least a dozen posts, that got a lot of up votes, on Reddit about how this bill will make it so that the government can declare anyone (such as an OWS protestor) a "terrorist", immediately strip them of citizenship without trial, and then toss them into indefinite detention under NDAA.

I'm seeing similar noise about the PCIPA (Protecting Children Against Internet Pornography Act). If I were to believe the several calls to blackouts and protests I've seen over that, it requires ISPs to snoop all my web browsing and record a complete history of every site I visit, and to also spy on all e-commerce and record the credit card details of every purchase I make, and to store this information for 18 months, and cough it up to any government agent who asks without any questions asked or any warrant requirement or probable cause (and some even say they have to cough all this up to the RIAA and MPAA).

The PCIPA stuff is getting even more traction than the EEA stuff. I've seen articles in a couple of "real" papers and magazines repeating the stuff about tracking all the sites you visit and credit card purchases.

As I said at the opening of this comment, the internet is an amplifier, and it amplifies both the stupid and the smart. However, it is not a linear amplifier. I think it is more effective at amplifying the stupid. The reason is that smart people figured out how to communicate with distant smart people without the internet. The internet has made it more efficient, of course--I can now get information in minutes that used to require going to a good university library or finding a place that had free access to things like Lexis or Westlaw.

A lot of the stupid, however, was fairly isolated before the internet. Perhaps each town had its small circle of, say, conspiracy nuts, but they were surrounded by more sane people, and their interaction with outside conspiracy nuts was through inefficient means, like newsletters, vanity press books, and the like. This kept the stupid in check. Now, with the internet, no matter how far out and unlikely your belief, you can find a lot of other people who share it, and that provide reinforcement.

So, for smart people, the internet was like the jump from hand copied manuscripts to the printing press. It really boosted the efficiency of something we were already doing. For stupid, the internet was like the discovery of fire.