Well, the Foreign Theives bit does make sense given that it's a big issue today with nations like China and even Brazil (which The Escapist did an article on called "Nation Of Pirates" at one point if I remember). The thing is that when it comes to patents, copyrights, and IPs and the big business of knockoffs and outright theft... well video games are small potatoes compared to the actual physical theft for profit business where you have sweatshops knocking off things like designer jeans and passing them off as the real thing, not to mention the whole issue with drugs and medicine. Viagra being one paticularly noteworthy example largely because it's a product used by almost every sexually active man on the planet at one time or another, by the old to regain performance, and by the young (and porn industry) to enhance performance and "hold the wood" so to speak. Despite being manufactured in the western world very little of the profit from that drug has gone into western coffers, largely because the eastern world spearheaded by China (which is hardly alone) have knocked it off and distributed it causing the loss of trillions upon trillions of dollars in tax revenues. The countries with the biggest stake being France and the US as those are the big nations Pfizers (Multinational French company) has it's primary contracts with. While it was doubtlessly exagerrating there was an article I read once talking about how Viagra alone would have solved the US's deficit and probably rendered it and France the two wealthiest nations on Earth had they reaped the benefits through Pfizers. This is based on the idea of a stranglehold of a product with a high demand which hey would have charged the intended
price for, coming down to something like a quarter per pill in the hands of the US. The thing is that the countries knocking it off lowered the prices substantially to undercut the creators given no costs to recoup. One has to take it with a grain of salt but the basic arguement being that it's the drug that build a lot of the major asian powers through knockoffs and created the springboard for a lot of their recent success. The compelling arguements being made about how it's almost a household product globally nowadays, bought by almost every guy covertly through the internet or whatever at one time or another. Some might have heard jokes about a "Boner Tax" that kind of originated with this article because of the points made about the goverment's cut on drugs especially those that don't have a valid usage for treating a serious illnes.
To get back on the subject, the point of that entire rant is that a lot of money is involved here through issues that have nothing to do with video games or purely intellecual properties but involve the same areas of law. Something like SOPA is meaningless internationally because the narions that are problems refuse to follow US laws... and with the money being made, why should they? Bills like SOPA amount to saying "stop, or we'll write another piece of paper and ask you to stop again". As much as people, especially on the leftward side of the political spectrum, hate it, the only way to stop someone from something that is in their own best interests, in pursuit of your own, is to force them. In the final equasion most wars come down to trade and economics, and honestly I think we're heading towards a very big one... with all the reasons why people say we can't fight ("owning" money to China, trade, etc...) being exactly the reasons why the war is going to happen and be so nasty.
To use China as an example even though it's not the only offender, understand that it's what some call a "neo barbarian" nation. That is to say that while it has SOME advanced technology and huge, modern cities, rivaling anything elsewhere in the world, not to mention an increasingly advanced military and space program, it's also a nation where people LITERALLY live like they are in the dark ages in staggering numbers, diseases like SARS got started from people living with their own livestock. China innovates very little on it's own, as a culture it kind of intentionally stifles creativity (very little does not mean nothing however), Chinese trade is based almost entirely on taking the ideas from other cultures, exploiting it's wretched underclass, and producing knockoffs which it sells back to those cultures. If China was to stop doing this it would literally have nothing to trade, it's robber economy would collapse and the entire nation would pretty much collapse to absolute squalor. The situation is nasty because there is really very little of a middle ground, China can't help but prop up this system which is what has allowed them to build and maintain their military and those previously mentioned modern cities.
All of this stuff about protecting American ideas pretty much amounts to nothing since even if you make things less conveinent for the users, the problem is still going to persist. I mean all you need is one guy with legal access to something that can be duplicated who sends it back to China or another similar nation (using the postal service if nothing else) and it will be knocked off if there is money to be made. The kind of issues SOPA largely addresses really aren't the kinds that come with the threat of foreign trade.
In the end SOPA is a piece of garbage, and the scare tactics used to sell it are ridiculous. Some problems can't be resolved without a major war. No piece of paper is going to get a bunch of people to consign themselves universally to abject poverty for the benefit of someone else.
That's my thoughts on the matter. Honestly, I'm surprised they resurrected SOPA so quickly under any pretense.
One problem with US law is that there is nothing that prevents a law or set of ideas from being brought up again and again until it finally succeeds. Meaning that with things like this even if SOPA is defeated it just means the same thing will come along carried by another piece of paper. I think the US needs a mechanism to rule permanantly on certain things to prevent lawmakers and lobbyists from keeping them alive until they get through due to persistance if nothing else. Today it's SOBA tomorrow it's SOPA replacing Piracy with Buccneneers in the name to claim it's a differant bill. That's sort of like trying a guy multiple times for the same crime until he's found guilty which is forbidden.
