I have to say, if how this SOPA,PIPA,ACTA,megavideo stuff is working out was planned ahead, expected, executed and coordinated; I can't help but be incredibly impressed. If they anticipated and had plans for all these paths then I have to admit my admiration for their brilliance.

From a game theoretic point of view these lobbyists or government groups or what have you were doing 5-step+ thinking. With respect to the recent events, everyone, including the tech community got played. Maybe not a Xanatos Gambit but verging on it.

Over time they quietly passed a slew of boring laws with aggregate equivalence near enough to SOPA - just without the concentrated firepower. With the recent ACTA, there is now an international baseline for the basic framework to tackle these things. In the US, SOPA and PIPA could have even been red herrings. Tying up attention bandwidth and energy so they could later go ahead and pass future laws and enact similar initiatives, with SOPA as the new reference point. Knowing the people would be drained and full from victory. Basic psychology. And if SOPA passed, well the more the merrier.

With that in place - even in the case of the failure of SOPA, the implications were clear. Nuclear options are on the table. Regardless of the success of the bill, they had a target, a well known centralized file sharing service. There were plenty of others, why megaupload? It is one of the most well known with some of the largest mindshare. Make an example of them and send a signal to similar and future services. With SOPA fresh in mind and now megaupload's demise, a chain reaction of similar services are either ending sharing or plain shutting down and taking people's files with them. Causing a cascade to all other services built on them - some legitimate the rest questionable.

With this case a precedent is set, the significance and direction of which I am not studied enough to know. But anyways, this is just for file sharing and counterfeiting services no? They deserve to be taken down as most of their stuff is illegal. Even if the things that we feared would happen in the event of SOPA is now voluntarily occurring to that group they should have known the risks when choosing to take that direction.

I don't know if it is appropriate to post the "First they came for the..." that is making its way around (maybe too much) but from an intellectual point of view this is amazing to watch unfold. Most of these bill writers probably have positive intent but the interactions involved are extremely nonlinear and sensitive, humans are not yet anywhere near intelligent enough to try and control such a dynamic and complex network without unintentionally compounding the scope, destabilization and extent of their actions. Morphing the entire network of interactions into something with consequences no one can truly predict.

But even as many fall, the constant energy into the system will likely create a more complex, less centralized and bullet proof internet and society in general (hopefully). So I suppose the good thing is that the media company truly care about the internet. They are pushing its evolution to something more robust and are fighting complacency. Just need to be careful to not overwhelm positive energy with dissipative forces and cause extinction.