Singapore is already 'ahead' of the US in having a site-blocking mechanism:<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_Singapore" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_Singapor...</a><p>One nice thing about the US political culture is that even those who want to censor things will try to spin their efforts as being something else; 'censorship' is a dirty word here, and even professional censors know it.<p>This isn't the same in less individualistic cultures; there it is often more broadly accepted that censorship for the 'public interest' must occur. The responsible agencies will thus speak with a frankness and pride about their censoring activities – unlike here in the USA, where the same topics only get euphemistic discussion.<p>Singapore has many admirable qualities but the space afforded non-traditional expression, and especially governmental criticism, is much more limited than in North America. Wikipedia has a nice summary of general cross-media censorship in Singapore...<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_in_Singapore" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_in_Singapore</a><p>...and the use of domestic libel suits and other pressure to discredit or pressure news publishers occasionally gets mention in major Western papers, as with this example...<p><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/04/opinion/04pubed.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/04/opinion/04pubed.html</a>
Singapore already has all of the infrastructure they need to censor whatever they want (online and offline) and they're perfectly comfortable using it. SOPA/PIPA may change what is "trendy" to censor (Singapore currently focuses on high-profile pornography, I believe, in addition to monitoring and limiting dissent, of course), but that wouldn't be a fundamental change.<p>Instead, what I'd say is that the example of Singapore is a reason to oppose SOPA/PIPA. Giving a government comprehensive censorship tools will inevitably chill democracy no matter what those tools are "supposed to" be used for.
The article that the Law Minister linked to: <a href="http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/singaporelocalnews/view/1176385/1/.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/singaporelocalnews/vi...</a>
Note that the primary reason why the current state of copyright law in Singapore is overwhelmingly skewed in favour of the copyright cartel is due to the free trade agreement signed with the USA. They are obliged by the treaty to put in places laws which are draconian by US standards.
Why do they do this? I bet Singapore is a net importer of IP: I don't think they have much own music or movies or books or off-the-shelf software to care about the issue.<p>I can see how US would press them into protecting IP, but what's with the centuries-proven tactic of promising and then never doing anything?