But tellingly, activism has failed to solidify a victory there. It was COICA, then SOPA, then PIPA, then ACTA, and now TPP, all pushing a bunch of the same core changes. Whenever there's resistance, the thing goes into hiding and comes back wearing new clothes. Lately, it's been handled in settings where debate happens behind closed doors and domestic activism has little power.
And yes, that might look different if major corporate players were more involved. But their stances are varied and inconsistent at best, and to the extent that this is for the benefit of private citizens the political approach appears to be an endless defensive fight.
That's because the tech sector is busy actually doing useful stuff and inventing world-changing technologies. Pharma only does some of that (their pace of innovation is quite lackluster, and they spend more on marketing than on R&D, the real medical innovation is being done by other entities), finance is figuring out how to make money from a bad economy with hedge funds, telecoms are just exploiting their monopolies and screwing customers over, and entertainment is just rehashing old stuff with never-ending low-quality remakes, reboots, sequels, and prequels.
Instead of trying to use politics to make more money by screwing people over (which is how other industries mostly work), the tech sector makes money by creating new technologies. It's a fundamentally different mindset.
The reason why the tech sector does not engage in politics, is that people feel they are above politics and "don't want to get dirty".
Further more, they're sure the laws doesn't matter on the Internet anyway, right ?
There is almost no political engagement from the technology sector, as compared to others (like pharmaceuticals, finance, telecoms, entertainment). If there had, the DMCA might not be so onerous, the CFAA would be gone, and SOPA would never have gotten as far as it did.