<a href="http://uproxx.files.wordpress.com/2012/01/shutterstock_71132098.jpg"></a>Pat yourself on the back, Internet.

Oh well this is certainly ripe: Texas Republican Rep.

<a href="http://uproxx.files.wordpress.com/2012/01/mpaa.jpg"></a>We're big fans of Ars Technica around here: they offer intelligent, detailed coverage of tech issues, including the ongoing problems with the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), or as we like to call it, the complete and total failure to grasp the concept of the Internet.

When an internet community <a href="http://blog.reddit.com/2012/01/2-billion-beyond.html">of Reddit's size</a> is taken offline for 12 hours in protest of something, you know whatever they're protesting must be <a href="http://www.uproxx.com/tag/sopa/">awful as all hell</a>.

FYI, Rep.

<a href="http://uproxx.files.wordpress.com/2011/12/godaddycampaign.jpg"></a>So, as you may have heard, <a href="http://www.uproxx.com/webculture/2011/12/threatened-boycott-leads-go-daddy-to-end-its-sopa-support/">GoDaddy took its name off a list of companies that support the Stop Online Piracy Act</a>.

You see kids, consumer boycotts do actually work sometimes, <a href="http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/12/godaddy-faces-december-29-boycott-over-sopa-support.ars">especially one aimed at a company so shamelessly money-hungry</a> that virtually all of its ad campaigns are centered around gratuitous displays of T&A.

I've ranted quite a bit here and in other places about the absurdity of having people who know absolutely nothing about the internet -- and who also don't exhibit the slightest desire to do anything to remedy their ignorance -- being the ones who make laws regulating it.

And no, Al Gore is not one of them.