1. sopa/pipa is going to change copyright infringement from what is currently a civil infraction, punishable by a maximum penalty of $150k (US) for the worst infringements into a felony with a jail term of 5 years. plus, they are changing the definition of what is meant by infringement to include sites which offer streaming services such as youtube, hulu, etc. this is not sustainable and impractical to properly police.

2. if the DNS provisions pass (which thankfully it looks like they won't -- yet), the internet as we know it will cease to exist and be replaced by the internet as brought to you by rupert murdoch, the mpaa/riaa, and the current US attorney general. if one of the groups involved in writing this bill gets their way, you won't be able to go to websites they don't want you to see, end of story. the attorney general has the power to pull the DNS for any website he/she deems to be infringing. how long before this power extends to websites he/she does not want the public to see? tell me you think the government will restrain itself with such power at its disposal?

3. the DNS provisions will essentially do the same thing as malware that redirects your search results to malicious websites. only this time, the redirection is controlled by the federal government by the attorney general's command. this is almost exactly bringing the "great firewall of china" to the US. and all because hollywood is trying to pretend they're missing out on all this money. money which they have never statistically proven they are actually missing out on, and money which for some reason hasn't stopped them from posting substantial profits every year. ask yourself why the US government is protecting the business model of this industry, and what purpose the government has for propping up the industry in such a way.

the whole thing is beyond "hackers/pirates versus law abiding citizens". the whole thing is literally going to destroy the internet as we currently know it and put the absolute control of how the internet works into the attorney general's hands forever. you really need to read up on (a) the contents of sopa/pipa and (b) how DNS works, specifically how DNS "poisoning" works. then come back and re-read your replies in this thread and see how wrong you are.