Sadly, it’s probably worse than that.

1. The feds know that no amount of legislation — short of drastically curtailing copyright terms and broadening the “fair use” exemptions — is going to have ANY effect on “piracy” — it’s a global phenomenon, and other governments are simply refusing to become the RIAA lobbyist’s enforcement arm.
The REAL purpose of the “Pro-IP” act is so that the RIAA lobbybots can maybe make a few bucks more off of their silly “sue ‘em all” campaign. The “economy” is going down because the vermin RUNNING most of the big corporations have adopted our friend “Sam’s” view of how capitalism works — prattle endlessly about “the free market”, while getting your lobbyists to get the Government to create huge loopholes and enforced monopolies for you. Then when you’ve managed to completely destroy your company’s long-term future in a quest for short-term profits, you get that same government to give you MORE “help”

Look at the Eldred decision:
If Mickey Mouse had been allowed to enter the public domain LIKE IT SHOULD HAVE, Disney wouldn’t have been able to continue squeezing every possible cent. Thus, they very literally “bought” themselves another twenty years of “protection” — and, not coincidentally, totally reamed the public domain in the process.

But hey, maybe our buddy “Sam” IS right: maybe multinational corporate megaliths DO have a “fundamental right to exclusive control” of content effectively forever. After all, ten thousand years IS a “limited time”, y’know.