[billpatrianakos]

That's very paranoid. Occam's razor, my friend. They were probably going to do this anyway with timing being a coincidence. People give the US government too much credit for planning devious things. Most of it is a lot of fuck-ups and political favors. Nothing more. I sincerely doubt the Feds did this as so to give the finger to protesters. They've been doing this long before SOPA was introduced and will continue too. SOPA just codifies the status quo so that the chances of anyone getting in trouble for shutting sites down becomes nil.

[rdtsc]

> Most of it is a lot of fuck-ups and political favors.

There is a contradiction there perhaps. Political favors includes buckling due to lobbying. Then US govt. is just a proxy for large banking interests, the military industrial complex, pharmaceuticals, large agribusiness etc. So no the govt. might not have really cared about MU but maybe MPAA cared and when they care they line pockets and make promises about future rewards

[geekam]

So, the only way out for anyone who wants to survive is to lobby? Seems like the only solution out to me.

I've always had this problem with lobbying. If everyone has to lobby and I guess it mostly requires money these days then how is it not "legal bribing"?

[jakeonthemove]

Lobbying has always been legalized corruption, however it is better than actual corruption because it allows people to monitor the "bribes" (i.e. they're not hidden from everyone's eyes).

[newbie12]

The key is to make the bribes matter less, by limiting the size and scope of government's power.

[tsotha]

I agree with you wholeheartedly, but it seems we've reached the point that not only can we not shrink the size and scope of government power, we can't even stop it from growing.

[flyinRyan]

But then you can't end people's careers when you catch them taking "bribes". Honestly, I can't see how it's any better. Now we just get to watch it happening but we still can't do anything about it.