The guy has some good points but he makes them in a very condescending tone(especially towards people who are basically on the same page he is, albeit with differing ideas of how to get the job done) and his pessimistic views towards the current actions against SOPA(while realistic) become all the more ironic when he then suggests very unrealistic ways of his own to "fight" SOPA/etc.(Like boycotting major companies en masse.....as if that'd ever happen. At least small protests like what's going on now are feasible and work to some extent.)

Fair use: You are allowed to use small portions of copyrighted works, provided you do not sell your compilation (say, Wikipedia displaying the cover art to music albums).

Mashup: Combining multiple pre-existing works (parts of, more likely) or a pre-existing work with something new to create something new (say, much of youtube, for example the already-mentioned Hitler rage videos like this one about SOPA).

These are currently perfectly legal, but SOPA would undermine this and force Youtube, Facebook and others to either methodically go through each and every newly-uploaded "thing" (video, audio, image, text... depending on the site) to check if they contain anything that might be part of a copyrighted work (and probably just remove everything uploaded earlier just to make it easier), or simply close down.

SOPA and PIPA does absolutely nothing against the pirates they so like to rage about, instead they and related ideas threaten the internet as we know it today - the internet IS a mashup on several levels, culture is mashups, and internet is today a very large part of how we expand and build our culture. If the CEOs of said media conglomerates do know this (I suspect they might not, but I don't actually know jack), I can only assume that they're aiming to be our only source of culture - a futile (not to mention dangerous for themselves) aim if the public realises it.

I do not aim to deprive these richmen of further riches, but they need to understand and work with their customers rather than against them.

Sorry, got going too fast: If the industry has responded in a fair and reasonable manner to the whole "internet-thing" sites like TPB and the like would not exist at all and what would exist would be a few, small sites, that would be inconsequential next to the massive online media markets.

So yeah, don't blame TPB for SOPA, blame the media industries.
If you don't know what a mashup is or why they're important, I suggest you read Free Culture by Lawrence Lessig.
Commercialization does not always preclude a given use from being fair use, neither does using the entire original work. There's court cases that demonstrate both happening at various times.

Ahh. Gotcha.

<snip>
Never mind. Responding to wrong post.