^ How does SOPA protect monopolies?  I'm not being contrarian; I simply still do not understand in layman's terms what the hell this thing does.  I get the gist of the intent, but I also was not born yesterday, so I know there is an agenda present.  So I ask in all sincerity.

The purpose of SOPA and PIPA is to shut down internet piracy, primarily of music, movies and TV. A lot of those piracy servers are located outside the US. There are several in Europe, Asia even China.

However, Anti-Piracy Investigators face the problem that it takes a lot of investigation time and money to secure sufficient evidence to shut a server down, at which point users just switch to other servers and new Pirate servers go online elsewhere. And some jurisdictions simply refuse to play ball at all.

So it is difficult for Entertainment IP companies to effectively shut down copyright violations within the confines of National and international law, privacy statutes, due process etc. 

SOPA and PIPA are designed to sidestep that. Only it doesn't just target specific types of copyright violations, such as pirating entire movies. It affects all unauthorized uses of copyrighted material, including what could be considered fair use AND cases where there is a copyright dispute. There is no required test, simply an assertion of infringement, which the accused must disprove in a US court (even if the alleged infringement takes place in China).

I've read two conflicting accounts, one is that it can only be applied to access to foreign websites from the US. Another account says that the Bill is being sold as only dealing with foreign websites, but that the language of the Bill makes no such distinction and that the Bill might be used on such American websites as Youtube.

The consensus seems to be that some interested parties were too slow to have their opinions put forward, which is why the Bills ended up with bad language, and now there's going to be a new round to fix certain concerns before it's put forward again.