There is nothing we can do politically about SOPA. If it gets blocked it will be back again in 6 months even worse (as has been happening for the last few years).
Even so, I'm not worried. The internet interprets censorship as damage and routes around it. The hackers that built the internet and keep it running are much smarter and work much faster than the legislators. Short of becoming a china-level dictatorship, there is really nothing the mafiaa can do to stop it. The internet is here to stay.
Short of becoming a china-level dictatorship, there is really nothing the mafiaa can do to stop it.
According to the MPAA-promoted paper, their goal is to do just that.
Most of the censorship tools that China, Iran, and other such countries are using, are actually US-made. Deploying them here at home would be relatively easy, especially given the political climate and the legal opportunities created by the War on Terror.
Referring, of course, to the proposed U.S. legislation which could cause severe damage to the Internet—at least, that's what a lot of people are saying. See, e.g., this Open Letter From Internet Engineers to the U.S. Congress (the first signatory listed is Vint Cerf). On Wikipedia, people including Jimbo Wales are discussing strategies as extreme as blanking the entire site (except for an explanatory message) to get people's attention, and thereby perhaps incite them to action, such as calling their Congressional representative.
I just happened to find out about all this a few hours ago, being someone who tries to avoid distractions like most kinds of news, so possibly others here with similar habits will appreciate having it called to ther attention. Or possibly they won't. But to those of you who possess relevant kinds of expertise:
(I think this subject can be discussed without political advocacy, in which I am mostly not at all interested anyway. It just looks like a practical problem to me.)
Edited to Add: I forgot to include a fourth bullet point:
It seems to have been assumed by many commenters, nevertheless.