There are numerous examples of "creative people" making good money out of their work on the internet, without worrying about piracy too much.
Just think about this, your revenue as an iOS dev could be culled because someone in the app store ecosystem infringed. How is that a good way to combat piracy? The pirates are going to pirate no matter what road block you set up.
There would be a serious uproar if that happened, people wouldn't stand for it.
More likely is that some pirate sites will die and others will just go deeper underground. The people who are likely to be scared into shutting up shop all together will be smaller distributors of independent or amateur content.
I would be saddened if the Internet became like the high street circa 1996 with a few large companies and producers setting the agenda for what we will watch and listen to.
The attitude of "yes this law applies to the app store but it will never BE applied to the app store" is basically an exercise in double-think, and in my view is morally suspect.
What is the criteria then for who the law SHOULD be applied to? People the RIAA don't like? People legitimately disrupting established industries? People competing commercially with the friends of senators? The whole point of the rule of law is to prevent arbitrary exercise of discretion. The law either applies equally to everyone or applies to no-one.
I would be saddened if the Internet became like the high street circa 1996 with a few large companies and producers setting the agenda for what we will watch and listen to.
That's exactly what we have to worry about, and exactly what old-school content providers have been fighting for ever since the Internet was created.
We use YouTube and the App Store as examples that appeal to the common person's awareness of the Internet, but we have to be far more concerned about the effects of SOPA/PIPA/etc. on the next YouTube.
Viacom was essentially trying to drive YouTube into bankruptcy with its lawsuit against them. Granted, they lost.
Right now, someone files a notice, and Justin.tv says "oh crap! Lets take that down." and they do and everyone is happy.
In the future, someone might file a notice, and then Justin Kan shows up at work one day and finds that his entire business has been taken offline by the government.
Those two are so well known and have so many lawyers at the ready they would be safe.
But, there are plenty of smaller, legitimate services and sites that would be shut down because of SOPA.
And even if that were true, it's not automatically a good thing. iOS developers might end up better off through eating into consumer surplus, rather than creating more aggregate value.
