[tsotha]

The way it will work is the movie and recording industry groups will start pouring in money into party coffers. That should really read "continue pouring...", actually.

The bill will be split into smaller chunks and added as riders to completely unrelated, must-pass spending like the annual Medicare "doc fix", and passed at the end of the session over a two day period along with 1500 other bills. If there's substantial public opposition, and really there won't be because they're passing 60,000 pages of legislation in a couple days on the way out of town, the leadership of both parties will sit down and figure out who needs to vote against it to keep his seat. Amazingly the bill will pass by one vote in both houses, with all the members in a tough reelection fight voting against.

If the blow back is surprisingly bad the Congressmen who voted for it will say "Aw, jeez, I really didn't want to vote for it, but I couldn't allow the Medicare bill to be jeopardized by this one little thing. You don't hate grandma, do you? There's plenty of time to fix it in the next session." Of course the fix will be tied up by procedural moves and then watered down into a runny legislative paste if they can't bury it altogether.

And there you have it. Another piece of crap legislation paid for and passed with the least political impact. You can't say these guys don't know what they're doing.