One of the most frightening events happening today is a piece of legislature that is currently being debated in U.S. Congress. The Stop Online Piracy Act or “SOPA” combined with the Protect IP Act (“PIPA”) have the ability to drastically change the face of the internet as we know it. To put it simply, it would give the Attorney General of the United States and other “Qualifying plaintiffs” (copyright holders) the ability to immediately censor any website that it deems to have committed copyright infringement whether it is a domestic or foreign domain.  This in turn would cripple many widely used social networking sites (Youtube, Reddit, Blogs, even Facebook could be severely affected) but would also severely hinder many smaller scale developers, artists and designers.

Of course, it may not be apparent to all how SOPA/PIPA relates to IR, or more specifically the IR theory referred to as “Realism” (as…