Wow is all I have to say. I have followed SOPA and PIPA since before it became big media. We delt with this when I worked at Time Warner Cable, since it will hold that company responsible if you are caught downloading pirated movies.
In short, these laws are meant to hold someone accountable for copy write material. The problem is, the big producers have petitions congress and lobyed for this to be able to recoup some of their losses from copy write infringement. This in itself shows how much power money has in our government, but thats a side topic.
The problem is, instead of holding the people responsible who are actually downloading/uploading the copy write material, they want to try to hold the next person in line accountable. Mainly the service providers (ISP's, Youtube, etc.). The problem is, these company's go above and beyond to remove any copywritten material. When you have over a million new video's added daily, its impossible to police without help.
So, as a network engineer for a service provider, let me explain how we planned to deal with this. how many remember last year, Comcast was sued for slowing down P2P traffic? the FCC wanted that stopped, comcast did. A federal court overturned it saying the FCC had no right to tell comcast how to run their network. So what happens if this passes... We planned to go back to this model. Except instead of slowing it down, it would be stopped completely. Newsgroups, gone. And with the federal governments backing, the ISP's have the power to limit it like this currently.
What is the solution then? I can tell you SOPA/PIPA is not it. Look at some other things that could happen because of it. I let you borrow my car, you rob a bank with it. I am responsible for that because i loaned you the transportation not knowing what you planned to do with it? Piracy is a huge problem, and it needs to be addressed. How to address it? I have no idea, but I know this is not the right way.
