The Privatization of Copyright Lawmaking

An anonymous reader writes with this excerpt from TorrentFreak: "The biggest misperception about [the Stop Online Piracy Act] is that it is somehow unprecedented or extraordinary. It is not. SOPA represents just the latest example of copyright law defined and controlled not by the government but by private entities. Copyright owners will deploy SOPA in the same way they have behaved in the past: to extend out their rights. They will disrupt sites that do not infringe a copyright, interfere with fair uses of copyrighted works, and take other steps that evade the limits that the Copyright Act sets on a copyright owner's actual rights."

The flaw in democracy.

[Avarist]

And why does the American people still tolerate this again? Surely, in a democracy, every law should be in its people's best interest, no?

Re:The flaw in democracy.

[Chrisq]

my tank is full of gas and there is a chicken in my pot, what is the problem?

I hate it when that happens. Get him out quick, he'll go crazy and eat hundreds of dollars worth of weed.

Re:Insightful translation

[Pf0tzenpfritz]

Oh, I thought, that was what "IKEA" means.

Re:America is NOT a democracy

[realityimpaired]

I dunno. Aside from the cold of living in the northern part of the country, Norway isn't that bad.

Re:The flaw in democracy.

[znerk]

... or we could just shoot them.