They're starting to do that in England already, aren't they?

People wont rebel in the U.S., while the government kills every first born child, as long as the government and media tell the people here, killing first born children keeps people safe from terrorists.

Unless you're young like me and were born after the Gulf War Era, and have learned that 9/11 was mostly the result of incompetence, infighting, and incredibly poor management.

Financial gain isn't the only factor for determining whether something is fair use, and the wording is such that the determination of fairness is somewhat up to the discretion of the copyright holder. Taking down an unauthorised use (fair or not) is always just a click away. This wouldn't necessarily hold up in court, but copyright holders stamping out fair use generally aren't going to be legally challenged. This is the same line of thinking behind the Authors Guild complaints that the Kindle's read-aloud feature counts as a derivative work and a potential threat to audio books (despite the Kindle having the usual sort of artificial, unemotional machine voice).

SOPA and the like make things easier for copyright holders that favour the aggressive approach by helping to squeeze out fair use in regards to the letter of the law (if not the spirit) by overlapping older laws without actually going to the trouble of repealing them (which would be much more expensive and very difficult). There are already other situations where a later US law has essentially overruled an earlier one without repealing it: US law permits making a single backup of your original media but the later DMCA law prohibits circumventing DRM; I'm no lawyer, but the way I understand it the DMCA does not include an exception for circumventing DRM for the purpose of making that otherwise-permissible backup (even if it is impossible to make a working backup without doing so).

Aww... FFS not again!

Polish riots in UK, here they come! :P

I don't even know what that is. Various specialists are warning for years that we will not have to wait for much longer to govt. retirement program to collapse and nobody will get their pension at all, and people think "naaah, it can't be THAT bad..."

at the same time, this year ministry of finance missed the budget of 50mld PLN (it's a lot for this country), and nobody faced any consequences in the ministry for that.

The govt. is doing pretty much whatever they want, and nobody gives a damn.

This crazy carousel started pretty much when they banned all forms of gambling unless in licensed casino. If you ever want to visit Poland, do not play publically poker for money, because they may bust your ass.

Unemployed rate is 15% and growing, in my wojewodztwo (equivalent of your states, but smaller) it's even more like 20% and among the youth it's around 30% in the whole country.

We are going to be the next Greece rather sooner than later. And maybe then people will notice something's wrong with this country >.<

Not surprised, considering the movie (and music) industries are one of the few industries not moved from US to China yet. So it makes kinda sense US clings to them so hard, and want to make it a capital offense to whistle the theme of the latest Hollywood blockbuster.

Next on the line: trying to prevent Google, Microsoft, Apple and Facebook from gathering information of you, and pushing ads to you, should be made a capital offense as well. It could be called "The Freedom of Data Flow and Access Act".

They are a bit like the French with their wines and "champagne".

SOPA is being brought up as a smoke screen. A dangerous one, but a smoke screen none the less.
The USA $ is suffering and the import market is soon to feel a squeeze which will cripple the economy unless something is done to level it all out. I believe it was Wednesday that the US stopped international trading as the banks were nosediving back towards recession causing lows and the US government wants to try and keep the many faults in their system covered and one way to do that is to keep throwing crap into the media.

On that the media is one of the most dangerous political weapons. Over here in the UK which ever party was backed by the Sun newspaper often gathered the largest number of the 'swing vote', therefore making their way into parliament.
The news at the moment is trying to convince UK people that we NEED to go to war with Syria. They show only a few images of people and the UN has yet to answer what really happened there a few days ago.
This system is set up and runs from top to bottom with those in charge saying "We would LIKE it if this person could go because we are unhappy." and every one below looks for a way to remove the 'problem' rather then looking to moderate and mediate a working agreement.

There are legal ways to gain yourself a place within the political system, but it is hard. I am a supported of Democracy2015. Although they have many flaws they are the best introduction I could think of for attempting to gain access into government.
For any UK members go check out - www.democracy2015.co.uk



EDIT:::
Sorry for ranting, but although I agree that SOPA is very bad news to behold, there is far more behind it that is more dangerous. The problems are that the media is constrained in almost every country that you could visit and in the US they have their hands tied with super enforced legal frameworks.
We need to stand against these things, but do remember that it will continue to show its' ugly head every time they feel A) threatened, B) people will let it pass C) the race is theirs.

While it's almost certainly true for Romey, I guess Ron Paul would be much better in the office.
So, there is hope! They want to block porn :)

If a president did what the American public wanted then the rest of the world would be forced to unite against a common enemy. :P

It doesn't really, but that hasn't stopped some courts, lawyers and other officials from saying you still can. It's a muddy thing. That's how a lot of US law seems to work... Congress writes broad, sweeping and ignorant legislation and then the courts weed it out and refine it over time.

I call it "right wing liberalism", but what do names matter?

Stupidity like this is why I gave up on the human race long ago.

We are a failed species, but we're too dumb to realize it and disappear of the face of the earth.

this is worse than a fascist state...
will never buy a movie or other crappy copyrighted record industry ^%$, hope they go bankrupt

By and large they ARE doing what the public wants. The public likes public lynchings so you get certain crimes where possession, even in absence of knowledge that one possesses something, is illegal. They'll probably get Snowden in the long run, even though it confirms what people have long suspected, that the spy programs aren't in compliance with any of our laws or constitution.

And we've had austerity measures for the last bit, rather than stimulus. Sure, our austerity measures aren't real austerity, but they've been real enough to slow the growth in our economy and delay world wide recovery a bit. Just not by as much as the European incompetence.

The voters also seem to like conservative economic policy, even though it only serves to help a couple percent of the population, leads to higher crime and nearly took down the entire world's economy.
They don't really matter, my point there was that it's not right wing and it's not left wing, it's crazy wing politics.
That's overstating it a bit isn't it? Plus, this is the US, ultimately, your local laws would apply.

That being said, the hit to creation of new movies and music would conceivably affect you.