There are laws in place. But, they're the early laws, and they're far from perfect. Consider the DMCA (The Digital Millennium Copyright Act, a body of international copyright law) as you would the Articles of Confederation. It's the primary, most powerful assemblage of law right now. But, it's flawed, and broken, and causes some problems. What we need is the Constitution to come along, and handle the problems while creating a great base on which to build when new changes are required (in this analogy, these would be the amendments). SOPA and PIPA are steps in the wrong direction. Too many individual liberties are destroyed, removed, or blocked from the individual that it breaks the system in the worst way. If your system is built on the concept of democracy, that every vote counts, then preventing entire regions or demographics from voting means your system doesn't work. Likewise, preventing and restricting access to what content may be seen and created in a form like the internet undermines the entire point of your idea.
Yes, there needs to be some regulation. But not like this. The DMCA was a good start, and we need to improve from there, not revert into total control. We were in a Huxleyan state before, given all the pleasures that we might not care about the problem. Moving us into an Orwellian state where all we see are the problems without any of the pleasures is not the proper response.
