Wow, that is one hell of a derail. And I feel somehow compelled to be a part of it.
I'll restrain myself, even though I would very much like it. It would've been too consensual anyway. Most people here agree, with only one or two disagreeing.
Still, can't restrain too much : the problem I have with lobbying is that representatives are elected by the people to serve their interest. Representatives are their voice at congress or in whatever chamber to which they were elected. Now, if stakeholders can give you money while you're pondering the law, you're only serving the interest of the highest bidder. Not the interest of the people who voted for you.
Back to MegaUpload, Kim Schmitz is a former hacker. The basis of being a declared hacker is to have a few toes on the bad side of the law, while staying on the good side of the law. I'm pretty sure they will get out of the trial unscathed.
What I hope it will show is that, even though "the MegaUpload system fuels small mafias", Universal is a BIG mafia. Sending the FBI take down a concurrent and arrest its head executives ? Sounds pretty bad. But not as bad as their PR. Now, for most of the Internet, Universal must die. Serious hackers will want to make an example out of them.
By the way, I heard MegaUpload was only the first one. The next that are considered are MediaFire, VideoBB, FileServe.
PTTG, about the decentralized system, the thing is maybe it would require too much redundancy. P2P has a lot of it, but only popular files are saved. Maybe an architecture similar to the TOR network would be more appropriate, with people around the world turning a computer into a server, with only 3 or 4 copies of a file distributed. Basically, the more stable machines would be reserved for unpopular content, so you'd trade stability for redundancy.
Back to SOPA and PIPA, they said the bills were postponed "until a compromise is reached". What does that mean ? With who do they want to compromise ?