With that said, I'd suggest that politics exercises its mind killing power over some issues more than others, at any given time within a society. Some issues inflame political loyalties, but some do not.
ADBOC, a bit. I think that is accurate in terms of a description of society. I think it is misleading if you interpret it causally. Issues do not inflame political loyalties in an individual because the issues are possessed of some properties with respect to society. They inflame political loyalties in an individual because of attributes of that individual. A part of this may be an expectation that society at large cares about the issue (I think this is likely in some cases) but I don't think that is essential - I expect that it applies to identification with any particular group that is likely to have a strong opinion on the topic.
Right now, I'm under the impression that copyright enforcement law simply is not a highly-charged partisan issue for the overwhelming majority of people in the United States.
Probably not. But I would say that it is absolutely a highly-charged (non-partisan, but that's my point) issue for, say, the overwhelming majority of people on Slashdot or Reddit. Would you disagree?
Given our demographics, how do you think LW compares?
That's interesting. I initially parsed "copyright enforcement law simply is not a highly-charged partisan issue for the overwhelming majority of people in the United States" as meaning that it's almost universally agreed to be bad. That reading was reinforced by "A few individuals may strongly identify as[...] fans of copyright law" (if it had been "fans or opponents" maybe that would have straightened me out). I'm pretty sure that most people who have been directly affected by some kind of copyright enforcement mechanism o...
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.