johnobrien102

"Elsevier is liberal with respect to authors and electronic preprints. Unlike some publishers, we do not consider that a preprint of an article (including a prior version as a thesis) prior to its submission to Elsevier for consideration amounts to prior publication, which would disqualify the work from consideration for re-publication in a journal. We also do not require authors to remove electronic preprints from publicly accessible servers (including the author's own home page) once an article has been accepted for publication."

manuscript ~= preprint more or less in publishing speak

And to be clear, so far as I can tell, SOPA has almost nothing to do with arxiv.org, because arxiv.org publishes the manuscript, not the final version of the article. Elsevier's stated position is that publishing the manuscript version is not copyright infringement.

Even if SOPA passed, sure, it would be easier for Elsevier to shut down arxiv.org. But if arxiv.org started publishing the final version of articles for which Elsevier had obtained worldwide exclusive copyright, that would be copyright infringement anyway. So the key (it would seem to me) is whether arxiv.org publishes the final version of articles or not (they curenttly don't), not whether SOPA passes, that determines whether arxiv.org is to get shutdown.

And so if they did, the answer to the question "Could Elsevier shut down arxiv.org?" would be "Yes."

Right now, the answer is "No."