Does that mean Microsoft and Apple have to support any anti-piracy bill, without any regard for its consequences? Because if that's true, then they are no better than RIAA and MPAA and they couldn't care less about the Internet and censorship, as long as they reduce the pirated copies by 10% (if that).
Companies, even those fighting this bill, only care about their own interests. That's why I think people who blindly trust companies to do the right thing are crazy.
That's correct. In these cases however, I think it's not unreasonable to side with them, if only temporary. The enemy of your enemy is your friend, after all. Sometimes it doesn't matter why someone fights, it matters who he/she fights.
That doesn't mean you should abandon all reason and blindly trust them. Actually, you should be wary and watch your back - if their interests change, as you say, a company won't think twice and back-stab you without batting an eye.
To come at that question from the other direction, I sometimes wonder what (if any) anti-piracy bill some tech folks would support. The counter-argument to better IP enforcement often seems to be "change your business model", which is not a policy statement.
Piracy is already illegal. Just like child pornography is already illegal. There is no need to make extra laws about it, and whenever somebody purports to write a law to "prevent" a crime that is already illegal, you can know that that law will contain terrible, overreaching things.
There's a reason that there's no law that holds telephone companies responsible for law-breaking which is organized over their wires / cell towers. It's ludicrous.
Just making something illegal doesn't prevent it from happening--there also need to be laws providing mechanisms for investigation and enforcement.
The phone companies have all sorts of legal duties to law enforcement. If a court orders it, they have to assist with taps, traces, geolocation, call records, etc.
As you say, piracy is already illegal. And we know there's a ton of casual piracy that goes on--see:
