The companies listed all have a vested interest in seeing SOPA scrapped (or significantly re-written), but their interest parallels everyone else's: that creating an extrajudicial shortcut for folks to black out or financially cripple sites they claim are infringing on copyright not only bypasses the already-draconian DMCA, but bypasses that act's safe harbor provisions, making everyone effectively responsible for anything that happens on their site.
In theory, a simple blog like mine wouldn't be an issue. I monitor what people post here in comments pretty closely and reasonably. But SOPA doesn't worry about reasonability. If US Bank decided that some of the statements in my highest-comment post had proprietary information (comments from current or past US Bank employees), or simply didn't like that post being on the air, SOPA gives them a means to black me out, without recourse or notice. Lovely, eh? #ddtb
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Internet giants place full-page anti-SOPA ad in NYT – Boing Boing
Internet giants place full-page anti-SOPA ad in NYT. By Cory Doctorow at 6:13 am Wednesday, Nov 16. Congress may not want to hear from opponents of the Stop Online Piracy Act at today's hearing, b…