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Comment by pjama | Hacker News Reader

Couldn't they just redirect traffic coming from the US? Leave it accessible to the rest of the world!

No, because even if the law is something US-specific, its effects (should it pass) are not.

That's cute, and we 'foreigners' know that. But there's nothing we can do, and to us it's just an annoyance we have to sit out.

Note that I otherwise support Wikipedia on this.

Not true, your government can through diplomatic means have an impact. You could call whomever represents you or even call the US embassy.

Nonsense. There are loads of bad US laws (e.g. terrible employment rights, terrible anti-discrimination rights) that the rest of the world, or EU don't copy and aren't affected by.

The affects of SOPA passing would probably be a benefit to many countries, since more companies & jobs would come to their juristiction (some countries in EU do this with more favourable corporate tax laws, or look at Switzerland and Cayman Islands with banking laws.)

None of those laws are at all related to censoring the Internet, which is a global network, so non-US citizens using US websites (like Facebook, Youtube, etc) are still affected.

Tell that to the UK citizen that's being extradited to the USA for American copyright violations. Also, The Pirate Bay claimed that the 2006 raid on their servers resulted from pressure from the MPAA.

That was one of the proposed actions, but it looks like they didn't choose it. Which is a shame. US-only will not harm those that have no congressperson to write to, but it will also be an interesting talking point in the US media, who might start asking if SOPA will force jobs out of USA (which it might well do).

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