As a certified web nerd, it was quite refreshing this week to see all the attention Wikipedia drummed up for the catastrophically wrongheaded SOPA/PIPA bills. No web professional in his/her right mind would ever support the proposed legislation or any similar legislation designed to legislate access to web content. I’m not an inveterate petition-signer, but I always make exceptions for Internet issues. I remain as in love with and amazed by the Internet today as I was in the 1990s. I think the Internet is the world’s greatest library, newsstand and shopping mall. And I believe with all my heart that the web is the single-most important research tool for journalists and historians. But I also think that the Internet evolved faster than our ability to put it in perspective. For example, online bullying grew into a problem because parents and mentors didn’t foresee how the web could be used by children to hurt other children. Piracy became a bigger problem than it needed to be because too many parents and mentors didn’t even know kids were engaging in unfettered file sharing. And then when some responsible adults were alerted, many didn’t even know how file sharing worked. All the while, two generations of young web users became very accustomed to getting whatever content they wanted — whenever they wanted it — for free. If legislation like SOPA/PIPA was needed, the international operators of Megavideo would not have been arrested yesterday. But that doesn’t mean there shouldn’t be a realistic conversation about online piracy, whether or not our culture has inadvertently promoted such theft, and where we can go from here — without needlessly limiting the communicative potential of the Internet. — Patty Mahlon, director of digital media