Thanks for the notes guys.
In one sense, of the forums I post to, everyone knows the dangers at stake. And per Iain's note, it's absolutely exhausting, except it's not "an act", 'dem evil critters wanted SOPA for what it was, they didn't think 12 moves ahead in any kind of master plan. Rather, there's everything to gain and little to lose to just keep introducing these things, and like me, eventually the energy of the rebels wears out.
A main reason I'm going to take a break soon is that X internet freedom fighters can only do so much, we got the basic word out twice, on SOPA and ACTA, and we're all collectively getting tired and starting to miss the 3rd generation bills. So even if we keep hollering, one day some random FSCKILLA billa (or whatever acronym) bill hits, we'll be living in a Post-______ world.
What we need is some higher grade help, like Judge Posner I mentioned elsewhere, or maybe that new silicon valley corp coalition. We need a signature event that completely turns Copyright on its head by using their own over-extended rules against them, so devastatingly that it re-writes the entire global mood. Then I'll join back in the aftermath cleanup.
But it's getting to where I'm running out of steam in my local life, and if that happens I'll be of no use to the movement 3 years from now with whatever that time frame requires.
Edit: Although I was a low end mediocre player, I am permanently altered by my Magic the Gathering days, and I instinctively look for "News Combos". News outlets, trying to drill out copy as fast as possible, (lately?) seem to have a bad habit of treating each news "object" like it's its own thing, and either via author exhaustion or design, refuse to see what happens if you combine these IP related articles together. What MTG taught me is that even innocent looking (by innocent or malicious design) items can do absolutely devastating things in combination.
So (I'm forgetting now if I posted it here) like the Michigan law student who used a Supreme Court case to bust a local "don't yell at the meter maids" ordinance, my rough vision of these copyright rules is pinging my Combo Bell. Basically, if Copyright Infringements are $175,000 a pop, and Copyrighted Works come into play the *instant* that you create them, then some ballistic fluke backed by big pockets (to bull past the corruption stalling tactics) might be able to argue things that the mouse clicks that the user clicks *and saves locally in some kind of work* might constitute a Creative Work, and then Facebook gets to deal with $175,000 fines *per user* *per day*.
