John Meacham
now, you might say we can just move hackage out of the US
This might actually make things worse. The President's office is against hurting US industry, and wants it to be mainly used to attack foreign sites. They will not only order takedowns, but use DNS and ICANN to enforce this policy.
Not only that, but the proponents are not just hollywood, it is anyone that feels they will have an advantage with the ability to bully internet sites. For instance, monster cable
The scientology "church". Politicians. Apparently, Bush considered bombing Al Jazeera, you can imagine how long it would take before it got blocked for "copyright violations". The problem is bigger than just free speech (as if that isn't big enough) - it's yet another presumed guilty, preemptive strike law. Patents are similar, even if you do nothing wrong, heavyweights (e.g. Google) can extort smaller players (e.g. me) by simply threatening to sue. Even if they have no chance to win, I simply cannot afford to play, so I have no option except to comply with their demands. SOPA is just the latest and most blatant in the series, trying to secure the entertainment industry the same power over the Internet. That the American Congress is working so hard to place this kind of power in the hands of a relatively small industry -- well, we can all draw our own conclusions. -k -- If I haven't seen further, it is by standing in the footprints of giants