I am from India and know next to nothing about law making procedures in united states. As an Indian my experience is that the rulers first look at their self interests first and then only provide some verbal convolutions to describe how the proposed law will help the ordinary citizens. If it does benefit the general public its mostly by pure accident. Well, being mostly and illiterate nation the degree to which our rulers succeed is very high.
I dont think the basic motivation of politicians in united states is likely to be much different. I hear the deep pocketed companies influence the politicians a lot in USA.
Can it be the case that the non technology companies such as Oil companies and Financial organizations which have been the most valued companies in last few decades felt threatened that new technology companies like Apple, Google etc. will grow much bigger than them and influence the lawmakers more than non-tech companies ?
If there are less and less start ups, if Google and Facebook find it difficult to operate wouldn't these people be benefited the most?
You're right that the basic motivation behind the politician's actions are pretty much the same.
However, it is not the Oil and Financial Organisations that stand to gain from SOPA, it is the TV and Film industry. They put in millions of dollars to make movies each year and then do their best to protect their assets. This is not so in India, where it is common knowledge that a movie/song will be pirated within a few hours of it's release.
What's important to know is that if SOPA/PIPA or any other variants are allowed to be passed, they will benefit the Movie industry by giving them the right to shut down practically any website (in a simple way of putting it) without much need for logic. This threatens all the big search and knowledge providers on the internet - Google, Facebook, Wikipedia, Reddit, MegaUpload etc.
The funny thing is, of course, all of this is being done ONLY against Internet users in the US. So, the rest of the world can happily pirate movies and share songs, but US citizens will have to pay the price for SOPA. (HN, correct me if I'm wrong here)