I'm an objectivist and I think this has nothing to do with the RIAA/MPAA. I think its just corrupt politicians flexing their muscles. They raid the MegaUpload people, charge them with a bunch of crimes[1] (that wouldn't stick in any legitimate court) and now all the competing services are in a panic. That panic means those competing services are easy to control.

But the real target is the public. You trot someone out, show off his fancy house and his fancy cars, and you go a long way to sell in the media the idea that these people are like drug lords-- making a lot of money doing something criminal.

Yet, I'm not aware of megaupload doing anything criminal. (I do believe that IP is legitimate, from a moral standpoint, but I don't consider the current IP laws to be consistent or moral.)

MegaUpload was a stand up citizen as far as I can see- they did occasionally host copyrighted content, and when they were made aware of it, they took it down. But as a digital-locker provider, it is not they who are morally responsible for the content of their service, but the people who put things in their digital lockers.

Raiding MegaUpload is like seizing every single house in Los Angeles because one of them was a crack den.

It makes no sense. I think the MPAA and RIAA don't really have any power, they're just organizations useful to the government.

This is all about government power, and the government wanting power over the singular medium of communication that it doesn't already control. You can't run a TV news station in the USA without being controlled by the FCC (and they exercise editorial control, though of course for obvious reasons this isn't made public in the news). Same goes for newspapers, etc. But on the internet, for now, you can say whatever you want.

SOPA/PIPA, et. al. are not at all about intellectual property. They're about control. That's why we're going to be seeing them re-introduced with different spins over and over until sometime we're all distracted by something else and they get passed.

This is how we got the PATRIOT ACT. That piece of legislation was sitting on the shelf waiting for 9/11. Well, the 9/11 "we can pass whatever we want so long as we call it terrorism related" age has passed. Both Bush and Obama were trying to pass SOPA type internet control under the guise of fighting terrorism, but they weren't able to do it.

So, they made an attempt with the claim that it was to fight "Piracy".

This claim is obviously bogus. But now a lot of the standard anti-IP types are going on a campaign against the RIAA and MPAA, having been riled up.... which means it might just be easier to pass the legislation to control the internet under some other guise.... maybe attached to the next debt ceiling bill perhaps.

I'm not interested, and not going, to engage in a debate about whether the concept of "Intellectual Property" has any moral legitimacy. I think its wholly irrelevant to this discussion.

This issue is, as with almost everything the government does, all about control. Piracy, or "terrorism", are only excuses to try and get us to accept their grabbing of more power.

[1] Specifically here I mean "Money Laundering", which I've read a legal opinion that says is written in such a way that they can make it stick to anybody, and that this is its purpose. Its the catch all law so that they can always convict. Basically, if you get your paycheck deposited in your checking account, you move some money to your savings account, then you later go and buy something with a credit card, and then pay your credit card bill from the savings account, you've engaged in "money laundering". Apparently the law is completely subjective.