No one's really tried to hide that too hard.

however, I think the reason Obama is now walking this back is that this was originally intended for the music & movie industries to stop piracy and someone in writing the bill became overzealous. I think when they figured out people were noticing that it went farther than originally intended, they got a bit scared, hence Obama will no longer support THIS VERSION of SOPA, though PIPA still looks like it's a go in its current form.

Remember this is the same organization who was doing some nasty tricks in the 2010 election.

piracy hurts business, so of course they're going to support legislation that supports business. The music industry is suffering because they've yet to figure out how to profit with the Internet around...

IMO it's a combination. It's about copyright, but it's also the big players taking out the little players - consolidation. And the prospects for the future of free speech are horrendous.

I have no problem with the protection of IP, and I think this movement was begun as a legit crusade to stop some of the money draining from this country. Somebody had a lousy idea about how to accomplish that, and when big business saw it they thought, "This would be awesome, let's throw it at the wall and see if it sticks."

It can't be allowed to stick.

It is about getting control over the Internet so that a small group of content providers can dominate this delivery channel the same way they dominate broadcast, muscling out the independents and using the government to enforce rent extraction from a passive peasantry.

It is about controlling access and rent extraction.

Here is a clue: whatever is in the title of the bill is almost always precisely what the legislation is not about.