“if you’re not breaking the law, you have nothing to fear from SOPA.”
Really?
Feds Falsely Censor Popular Blog For Over A Year, Deny All Due Process, Hide All Details…
And this is under the current law, without the additional tools SOPA provides.
Also, check out CloudFlare’s article about how they already have to deal with people sending bogus DMCA complaints in order to get the data needed to launch DDoS attacks. With SOPA, why bother to launch the DDoS, when you can get the law to do your dirty work for you?
Even the pro-copyright-enforcement Heritage Foundation warns about unintended consequences of the law. It doesn’t matter if the law is only intended to go after rogue sites if it’s written in a way that applies to legit sites as well, and it doesn’t matter who’s targeted if the solutions imposed result in major collateral damage.
Consider also that the “techno-elite” you’re referring to are the people and companies who built and run the Internet, and includes companies like Facebook, Google, Yahoo, Mozilla, PayPal and Wikipedia. Not just their users, but the companies. It seems they might know something about how it works, and how this law would affect it.
“I just don’t see opposing intellectual property protection as doing the right thing.”
Again, you’re falling into that second trap, where “something must be done” implies “this thing must be done.” There are other ways to protect IP than by passing SOPA or Protect IP in its current form.