I'm worried that the approach I'm seeing to stopping this bill gives the impression that it's supporters are simply "protesters" who support online piracy.
The article on agilepanda is well written but the site at http://americancensorship.org/ focuses on website blocking, jail time if you "stream a copyrighted work" and the very general threat of "Chaos for the Internet". It's the wrong approach IMO.
The decision makers, or our target market for this if you'd prefer, are congress, the senate and the president. There's an election coming up and we have real power we can wield. So here's my suggestion:
1. Make it crystal clear that replacing the DMCA with SOPA will kill many of the job creation machines coming out of Silicon Valley and the rest of the USA. It will prevent the creation of new businesses like Facebook that can only exist through user generated content and who generate billions in tax revenue and jobs for the US economy. If a representative supports this bill they are making it clear they don't support job creation in the USA.
2. Make it clear that this is not about online piracy, but about government control of a free communications medium. It is tantamount to the US government taking control of the country's newspapers and having the ability to selectively block the publication of editions they don't approve of.
3. Call your local congressman and senator and let them know that if they support SOPA, they don't support job creation in the USA and they oppose freedom of communication. Let them know two things: If they support SOPA you will not vote for them and you will encourage everyone you know to do the same. Secondly, let them know you will contact every major political donor in the area and make them aware of the representatives stance on the issue and how it endangers American business and innovation.
If we simply "protest" by shutting down our websites or sitting in the street, we risk getting lumped with the Occupy movement. However you may feel about that, what our politicians are most afraid of is losing their jobs and losing their funding. So lets hit them where it really hurts and take the power back.
Excellent comment. Any appeal to Congress that disrespects the value of copyright will not fly because, as the general public sees it, it is a serious problem when people have the value of their creative efforts diminished as they are spread across the web without compensation. The DMCA was never intended to protect infringers. It was designed to ensure that ISPs did not get caught in the cross-fire as copyright holders sought to protect their interests against those who did infringe. To do that, the ISPs had to abide by certain rules aimed at protecting copyright holders and their reward for doing this was to get "safe harbor" protection that shielded them from liability for the infringements that did occur on their sites. SOPA seeks to rip those protections away by effectively removing that shield. It also allows for what amounts to the creation of blacklists that will force search engines to ban allegedly transgressing sites from public view. All in all, then, it gives to the copyright holders (and to the Justice Department) a set of tools that will enable them to attack the websites directly for the infringements of others. In essence, this flips the DMCA on its head. Whereas DMCA nurtured the growth of the web by shielding innocent conveyers of information from liability as long as they played by the rules, SOPA (should it pass) will inhibit any such growth going forward by giving lawsuits and legal proceedings a central place in the copyright enforcement scheme across the web. This is why fledgling startups will be vulnerable to getting killed off before they can realize their potential: the copyright police will be there to shut them down before they can even develop proper systems for SOPA-style compliance. In other words, the issues here concern primarily the burden of litigation and whether, as a matter of public policy, people who have legitimate rights (copyright holders) should be given broad latitude to sue intermediate parties over what usually are infringements or whether they should be restricted in their right to impose liability on such intermediate parties, thereby giving such parties the room to breathe and to grow as companies and to further the information goals of the web itself. This is an important policy debate, and the people on the other side of it are not innately evil in arguing their case. I think they are wrong, very wrong, and that the consequences of what they are trying to do will be highly detrimental, as a matter of policy, to the future growth of the web. But it is important that the opposition to this not be centered on ad hominem attacks. That only detracts from the strength of the case to be made for internet freedom and growth and does indeed allow the opposition to dismiss bona fide complaints by casting SOPA opponents as people who are not focused rightly on the serious issues involved in this debate.
This is a great summary of the core issues with this. If you or someone else writes this up in an easy to digest fashion for laymen, I (and I'm sure others) would be happy to link to it on our websites. I'm currently linking here: http://fightforthefuture.org/pipa/ , but if that can be improved upon with less of an occupy-sounding slant, I'd love to support it.
This open letter to congress, cosigned by Paul Vixie, Jim Gettys, Gene Spafford, Dan Kaminsky, David Ulevitch, John Gilmore, and many other big names, also seems to be striking the right note. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/09/open-letter
> 1. Make it crystal clear that replacing the DMCA with SOPA will kill many of the job creation machines coming out of Silicon Valley and the rest of the USA.
Silicon Valley hasn't been doing all that good in creating jobs this century.
"But between 2000 and 2008, as Chart 3 indicates, California’s two big metro areas produced fewer than 70,000 new jobs - a nearly 95 percent drop and a mere 6 percent of job creation in the state."
The article on agilepanda is well written but the site at http://americancensorship.org/ focuses on website blocking, jail time if you "stream a copyrighted work" and the very general threat of "Chaos for the Internet". It's the wrong approach IMO.
The decision makers, or our target market for this if you'd prefer, are congress, the senate and the president. There's an election coming up and we have real power we can wield. So here's my suggestion:
1. Make it crystal clear that replacing the DMCA with SOPA will kill many of the job creation machines coming out of Silicon Valley and the rest of the USA. It will prevent the creation of new businesses like Facebook that can only exist through user generated content and who generate billions in tax revenue and jobs for the US economy. If a representative supports this bill they are making it clear they don't support job creation in the USA.
2. Make it clear that this is not about online piracy, but about government control of a free communications medium. It is tantamount to the US government taking control of the country's newspapers and having the ability to selectively block the publication of editions they don't approve of.
3. Call your local congressman and senator and let them know that if they support SOPA, they don't support job creation in the USA and they oppose freedom of communication. Let them know two things: If they support SOPA you will not vote for them and you will encourage everyone you know to do the same. Secondly, let them know you will contact every major political donor in the area and make them aware of the representatives stance on the issue and how it endangers American business and innovation.
If we simply "protest" by shutting down our websites or sitting in the street, we risk getting lumped with the Occupy movement. However you may feel about that, what our politicians are most afraid of is losing their jobs and losing their funding. So lets hit them where it really hurts and take the power back.