I am staggered by the numbers of people kissing the corporate backside of Google as though it's God.

It's a rapacious US corporation that is intent on forcing entire countries to live by US law where it can pressure Congressmen and Senators alike.

It and the other search engines have brought this upon themselves and by association us.

Google are most unco-operative with their DMCA notices and lie ..claiming they are acted upon within 5 hours. Utter bullshit..5 weeks is more like it. (Wordpress.com are far more ethical)

They own Blogger and allow people to create defamatory blogs and websites with pirated material. They force people to take Google through US courts to discover the owner only to find it's a non-existent person

Rupert Murdoch has been correct in his Twits..the entertainment business employs hundreds of thousands of people ( maybe millions worldwide ) yet it is in danger of collapse if pirates continue.

The vast general public are blase about this and do themselves no favours...they are mesmerised by Google, Apple etc who simply provide products on which creativity is accessed. China could run everyone of these corporations into a tin hat.

There are kids sitting in little flats in Moscow who are every bit as clever as Google technicians, yet like so many US giants, they have triumphed and convinced the world they invented the internet.

They are pariahs..very good ones..but it's the Googles of the world that are in danger of losing us control of the net.

And Wikepedia can fuck off as well..over-rated pompous gits.

Andrew Orlowski has written a very good summary of the discussion sofar with a look to the future:

"The deeper battle is a the historic one, about how much social and corporate responsibility new internet companies are obliged to take on board. The DMCA legislation of October 1998, correctly, let them off the hook for anything. This was done in the hope that new markets would be created without the constraints imposed by backward-looking copyright industries.

But now, after 15 years, things seem quite curious. It's the web giants that are backward-looking, and who fight hardest against the creation of markets. (They'd much prefer to be personal data miners, rather than allow free commerce to flourish.) Silicon Valley has done very well wrapping angle brackets and pastel colour graphics around 30-year-old internet protocols and calling them innovation. IRC becomes Twitter, for example. As former vulture Ashlee Vance writes here (a must-read), Valley's Web innovation may not leave very much for our grandchildren - and is acquiring all the vanity of Hollywood."

www.theregister.co.uk/2012/01/17/beyond_sopa/

great DJones!..that is possibly the first and only non-hysterical and spot on piece I have read about this.

We have so many hacks who are missing the boat and not understanding that Google etc are the problem and because they are..we all may be subjected to these harsh laws.

I've read some bizarre pieces that are so anti-copyright it's just weird. Almost every piece complains bitterly that SOPA is intent on enforcing US laws upon the world (true) yet that is exactly what the Google/Yahoo giants already do now.

the world seems to have bought into the idea that Zuckerberg is some frigging genius or that Steve Jobs passing was like the death of Christ.

As Anonymous has shown..there are hundreds of young hackers in their bedrooms who are every bit as bright as the so-called heroes of the net.

Looking at the line-up of powerful forces supporting SOPA..it will happen one way or another.