[msandford]

Like all new laws this one will be sold one way and used another -- likely very expansionary -- way.

For example the Patriot Act was sold as a thing that would only be used to catch terrorists. It's total terrorist-catching prosecutions to date is trivial, zero to a few. But it's still getting used quite a bit.

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/28/us/us-uses-terror-law-to-p...

http://www.cbsnews.com/2100-201_162-573155.html

I'm not saying that the people who got caught in many of those cases didn't do something wrong, nor am I saying that they should get away with no consequences. But I don't see how you can charge people with "terrorism" for doing decidedly non-terrorist things.

[tptacek]

If the text of the bill doesn't matter, the text of every other privacy-related bill doesn't matter either, and we can skip all these pointless arguments and let them pass SOPA. After all, they're just going to use milk safety regulations to combat piracy.

[msandford]

It's not that the text of the bill is COMPLETELY irrelevant. It's that the big companies will use their newfound powers in ways that fall into a gray area in the bill and of course the government will choose not to prosecute them for doing so, or judges will allow it because it's a gray area and not EXPLICITLY disallowed.