The problem isn't the bill, but the people driving it. Copyright piracy has always been around in one shape or another since the event of taping and before. The industry has never really dealt with it. Instead of innovating and developing new ways of delivering content to consumers (using the most powerful network ever created), the music and film industry want to tightly control their content and restrict its use. They see control as the means to defeating piracy.
SOPA and PIPA would be used to take down the large file-sharing sites, thats academic to be honest (and not something I have a problem with). The problem is what is left afterwards. Assuming that the people behind such sites didn't decentralise and move their operations to a new name or new country (unlikely), the authorities and the industry would be left with smaller scale infringers, some deliberate, some accidental. And they would go after them to set the example and scare the rest of the internet into line. It would target legitimate sites, and apart from pre-moderating every link, video, attachment or picture, there would be no other alternative for sites to follow to protect themselves against it.
My gripe with the music/film industry is this insistence on control of their media. I'm a DJ, and like most DJs nowadays, I use a digital playback system. Mine's based around a Denon desktop player rather than a laptop, it has 160GB of storage on it, so instead of lugging around cases of vinyl or folders of CDs, I have one device I carry round in a padded case. A few years back with the prevalent use of DRM on every track sold, the use of this device with legitimately downloaded content would have been next to impossible, as it only supports a few file formats (I would have only been able to play the tracks I've ripped from vinyl or CDs that I currently own, and only then if there had been no DRM built into those!). It would have also made use of several industry software packages (Ableton, Traktor, Serato) extremely difficult if not impossible.
Thanks to iTunes, Beatport, DJDownload, Juno, and others, I'm able to get ahold of high-quality copies of tracks quickly and cheaply. It's great and I love it. But if the music industry had their way, all of my 100GB of music would be wrapped in DRM restrictions preventing me from using the music in the way I want. These creative industries need to be dragged into the 21st Century kicking and screaming. Loss of control does not equal loss of revenue, as long as they provide the user with a better alternative to piracy. Something that is more convenient, more practical, cheaper than current physical media and less restrictive.
If you want a glimpse of the future, look at Valve's Steam network (for games). Steam has been running for 4-5 years now, and it features regular cut-price sales on games (with full games like GRID going for £2.75 on some occasions). Heavy discounting of some of these games ends up with more profit being made than if the game was full price.
From Gabe Newell's keynote speech in 2009 (
http://www.g4tv.com/thefeed/blog/post/693342/live-blog-dice-2009-keynote-gabe-newell-valve-software/), and from an interview with him last year (
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2011-10-24-newell-stop-piracy-by-offering-superior-service)
6:51 PM - Price changes in the retail world don't allow for much freedom. Steam and other services offer flexability. In fact, users apparently respond to pricing discounts within five minutes.
Valve was afraid that too many price changes would "confuse and anger" customers. It isn't the case.
Last weekend, Valve decided to do an experiment with
Left 4 Dead. Last weekend's sale resulted in a 3000% increase over relatively flat numbers. It sold more last weekend than when it launched the game. WOW. That is unheard of in this industry. Valve beat its launch sales. Also, it snagged a 1600% increase in new customers to Steam over the baseline.
Worried retailers, fear not. The weekend sale didn't canabalize sales from retail. In fact, they remained constant. Well, constant isn't a 3000% increase, but it's still pretty good, right?
6:56 PM - Looking at a third-party game, it saw increases of 36,000% with a weekend sale. Oh. Em. Gee. Okay, Gabe is starting to convince me that PC at retail is going to die very soon.
Oh, more data. I'm such a data nerd. Here's some data!
During the Holiday sales:
- 10% sale = 35% increase in sales (real dollars, not units shipped)
- 25% sale = 245% increase in sales
- 50% sale = 320% increase in sales
- 75% sale = 1470% increase in sales
At 75% off, they are making 15 times more money than they were at full price.
He cited one example where a 75 per cent off online offer had increased revenue by a factor of 40.
Not only that, but Valve saw a knock-on effect on the boxed version, which it attributes to happy customers evangelising the game.
"Promotions on the digital channel increased sales at retail at the same time, and increased sales after the sale was finished," he explained.
"Essentially, your audience, the people who bought the game, were more effective than traditional promotional tools.
The Steam model is the future, if the record/film companies are really interested in making a profit over controlling their "IP". With Steam, I can download the client onto a PC anywhere in the world, sign onto the network, and have immediate access to every game I've ever bought from them. I would kill for a music/film solution that made it that easy with my other media.
The pirates won't threaten your business if you make it worthwhile for people to buy content legitimately.
Remember to read their full in depth responses available as links on the last line in the starting paragraph of the article. 
