SOPA Opera

[howeird]

I'm not one for boycotts or petitions to try to sway congresscritters who are not my own. I spent too much time covering state legislatures to be deluded into thinking anyone except big money supporters can influence a politician from outside his/her own constituency.

Both my US Senators as well as my Congressional rep have been against SOPA/PIPA from day one, as well as the two Congressfolk both north and south of my district. It's effing Silicon Valley, folks. If California's senators had been Republicans, it would be an entirely different story.

I have nothing to be worried about. All the content on my journal and web site is my own, or is there with permission of the copyright holder, or is in the public domain. Everything I cross-post on FB falls firmly under the fair use clause, and/or had been placed in the public domain by the creators.

I don't steal content via file sharing sites. There is no noble reason behind this, I mostly don't think there is anything out there worth waiting for days to download.

For those of you who live in the US and are unfortunate enough to be represented by proponents of these bills, email them, phone them, snailmail them and let them know you contribute to the campaigns of candidates who oppose them and the bills.

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Meanwhile, Diane Feinstein turns 79 in June. One wonders if she is considering retirement.

Comments

[yourbob.livejournal.com]

I do agree that unless you have a lot of money to offer, there is little sway a non-constituent will have with any congeressperson. I have, however, thought that even when agreeing with them, signing a petition or contacting them has the potential to help them fight for the thing we agree on.

If the person on the other side says something stupid like "the American people want...", then my rep can respond with "oh yeah? I've got xty-thousand names from my district that don't agree with you."

[howeird]

From what I've seen behind the scenes, representatives only pull out the "what America wants" card in public speeches around campaign time. In the chambers it's more about presenting the pros and cons of a bill. Before the Tea Party, there was also some actual vote trading, but that's all gone now.

[unseelie23.livejournal.com]

Feinstean and Boxer both supported (and still support) PIPA actually. Hell, Boxer was a co-sponsor. Also, this is about a lot more than 'piracy'... it's about the ability of content providers to pull down web sites by claiming piracy without having to prove it. Well that and provisions that require blocking sites outside of the US that are claimed to be piracy related... never mind that the proposed methods would potentially break DNS for most people, and be easy for the pirates to circumvent.

The fact that they were able to go after and shutdown Megaupload without either of these bills tells me that this is a just another power grab.

[howeird]

Feinstein issued a statement last week that she is not in favor of either bill in their present state, and is on the committee to amend it. As for Boxer, it's pretty odd, there is not a single word about the bill on her web site that I can find. And she was one of the later sponsors - she didn't drink the Kool Ade until late December. I've written her a nastygram about that.