Which is fine, I suppose. You can't expect much more from a corporation. But this is why I wanted an organization like EFF to be present at the hearing. Someone who would actually care about other things, like Internet liberties, besides protecting their own profits.

But those managing the hearing don't seem to care about issues like these at all. All they care about if whether the bill helps protect some jobs on one side (pro-SOPA) or helps destroy others or destroy new businesses (anti-SOPA).

The Internet is much more than a zero-sum game regarding jobs, and the Government shouldn't be in the business of favoring one industry's jobs over the other. Let them deal with their problems themselves, and not use tax payer money to fix their problems, and kill or cripple another industry in the process - without even mentioning all those liberty and censorship issues.

The "don't be evil" motto doesn't imply Google is going to run around fighting moral causes that don't directly affect them. I get the impression that these days their goal on that front is to be steadfastly amoral rather than pro-actively moral, except where taking a more active stance aids the company's goals.

Obviously there's nothing wrong with Google being what ever they like, including "evil" withing legal limits.

All I am saying is, they shouldn't be surprised when most people don't admire them.

I think the issue here is more that Google decided to throw a lot of future organizations under the bus by endorsing a different, equally draconian measure that just happens to leave them untouched.

Who is to say that these same measures could not be applied to Google itself in future.

With such statements that amount to political activity by corporate vigilantism, it is going down a slippery slope.

This is the kind of idea that you expect to see endorsed in a Third World country or authoritarian/statist regime, not a supposedly advanced country built on advanced social constructs.

For example, if copyright infringment trumps all other activity in society including whistleblowing and journalism, then this should be enacted in law so that everyone can understand their rights and responsiblities. A group of companies differentially and unilaterally using their corporate or monopoly power to eliminate businesses and organisations is an example of the market creating rules for society instead of the other way around.

"The EFF’s Trevor Timm said he was overall happy with Google’s arguments in the hearing, but he thought the use of WikiLeaks as an example and the company’s focus on “following the money” revealed that it was more interested in its own search business than in freedom of speech.”They seemed to be endorsing the way that payment processors and advertisers should be censoring sites,” said Timm. ”I think it really shows why they should have had more of a representation of people at the hearing. Google is looking out for its interests, but we’re looking out for the interest of everyone on the Internet. Categorizing Wikileaks as a rogue site isn’t something we agree with.”"

sound better to me, but not good. i don't think its normal to cut ANY such service without a prior trial.

Be it your bank account or website. What about just expulsion from your own house? coming next, maybe. Welcome to the world where corporations control every bit, and where you don't own anything, you're merely licensed to use it, be it software of physical items (so again, house, or anything else)

Americans are being foreclosed on in mass, and in some instances they've been forced out of their homes wrongly by a corporation who made a mistake (here's looking at you, BoA).

But with 50% of the mortgages in the country underwater, corporations taking houses is much more real than we want to admit.

Owning something has become for many things the exception rather than the norm.

Car ownership and cellphone ownership are mostly marketing driven. almost anybody can own some car and phone.

[1]http://money.cnn.com/2011/10/07/real_estate/home_ownership/i...

You would have a court determine that a site is infringing and serve orders on U.S.-based payment providers and advertising

A court only make the decision, not the corporations.

It seems to me this has been the goal since the beginning. If the bill was only about attacking the finances of sites, the discussion here would have been about how this is an attack on free speech. By bundling it with another issue to be given up as a token sacrifice, a goal they weren't even really interested in to begin with, they are able to get the public to support and even advocate their original goal, which otherwise few would have been in favor of.

Also, eventually coins need to turn into real money to pay rent, buy food, pay for electricity. If your bank account is frozen that can be a big inconvenience to doing those things. There would have to be some kind of BitCoin for physical cash exchanges and you'd have to pay everything in cash. Not a very scalable solution for even medium sized operations.

EDIT: I don't think it will be very long (less than 15 years) before the content industries are dwindling, and regular people band together to replace it. It's already happening at a small scale.

I think she was making the point that strangling the finances of "rogue" parties is very effective, and how Wikileaks was handled is a textbook example of that strategy in action.

I doubt she thought it was right or ethical. She said elsewhere in the hearing that Google supports cutting off finances with direction from courts. In any case, it does prove her point that cutting off finances is an effective strategy and can already be done without SOPA (or other new legislation).

I mean, OK, you want to "protect IP", but in case of a false positive add a note in there that the complainer should pay the affected party a sum proportional to the complainer's market cap, such as this (numbers pulled from my ass, but you get the point):

     - Microsoft: 1 billion USD
     - MPAA: 1 billion USD
     - RIAA: 500 million USD

I don't see similar herculean efforts to deal with ordinary piracy, unless a framework were set-up. Would a society benefit from such a pan-national behemoth (assuming it would necessitate one)?