Stop the Internet Censoring Bill

[MrPopo]

The bill text is available here. The YouTube prohibition portion is "SEC. 201. STREAMING OF COPYRIGHTED WORKS IN VIOLATION OF CRIMINAL LAW." There's also "SEC. 102. ACTION BY ATTORNEY GENERAL TO PROTECT U.S. CUSTOMERS AND PREVENT U.S. SUPPORT OF FOREIGN INFRINGING SITES.", which would of course NEVER be used against domestic sites.

And don't kid yourself, your representative isn't going to read the bill anyway.

I remember when my friends and family were imprisoned by the Patriot Act.

Wait...

[scarper]

But most importantly, Guile will be very disappoint...

[AppleQueso]

I do wonder, if a bill like this ever actually passed, what would these big companies blame when their products don't sell well if they can't blame pirates anymore?

[YoshiEgg25]

I do wonder, if a bill like this ever actually passed, what would these big companies blame when their products don't sell well if they can't blame pirates anymore?

They'll still blame pirates. I guarantee they'll find a way.

Anyway, it looks as though there's huge support for the bill, sadly. We internet dudes have to step up our games.

Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) seems to be the only congressperson truly trying to stop these bills (SOPA and PROTECT IP) from going through. You can read his blog post on the matter here.

Also, I thought I'd share this little tidbit from Reddit. This guy has been reading into this and found some...inconsistencies with the actions of SOPA's sponsors.

You can read the full comment here, but here's a quick tl;dr version:

Found on Lamar Smith's website: streaming video of copyrighted materials. No mention that permission was given.

I've sent an email to the television station whose content Smith is streaming inquiring whether he has permission to do so and tipping them off to the hypocrisy angle if not.

With some help from IronHymen, bestnottosay, groovitude, and darthcorvus, I've gone through the list. Many of the ones I've marked "y" have multiple other infringing videos. If you want to join in, look through the ones I've marked "n"; my searches have been fairly cursory. Some of them don't seem to have any videos up, though, and some of them only have C-SPAN videos (which they are allowed to use).

Now, I'll try to contact local media in their area to get them interested in the hypocrisy angle. If you are a reporter or work for an anti-SOPA organization and want to take over from me at some point, leave a comment or PM me. If you want to take your own congressperson, please leave a note saying who you've contacted about it. (I'm only including media contacts, not contacts of Representatives in the chart, as that's what I'm more interested in tracking. Both are awesome of course.)

Code: Select all

Representative	 checked?	 found	 media contacts
Smith				 y			  y		  Austin Chronicle by dkesh
Conyers			  y			  y		  Detroit Free Press by dkesh
Goodlatte			y			  y		  n
Berman			   y			  y		  n
Griffin			  y			  y, y	  BoonRetsam
Gallegly			 y			  y		  n
Deutch			   y			  y		  n
Chabot			   y			  n		  -
Ross			     y			  y		  DealioD
Blackburn			y			  y		  n
Mack			     y			  y		  n
Terry			    y			  y		  FOX42, KMTV, WOWT by IronHymen
Schiff				y			  y		  n
Watt			     y			  n		  -
Carter			   y			  y		  n
Bass			     y			  y		  n
Schultz			  y			  y		  n
King			     y			  y		  n
Amodei			   y			  n		  -
Marino			   y			  y		  n
Nunnalee			 y			  y		  n
Barrow			   y			  n		  -
Scalese			  y			  y		  n
Luján			    y			  y		  Albuquerque Journal and KOAT by jcrawfordor
Owens			    y			  y		  WPTZ by kriskicksass

Man, that was a bitch to edit.

All of the 'y's have links to the offending material. I can't be bothered to put them in, so if you want to see for yourself, they're in the table in the Reddit comment I linked.

[pakopako]

Can someone dumb this down for me so that it doesn't sound like "whatever we vote for, another bill will be submitted for our elected political representatives to be bribed into supporting."

[Hatta]

There's also "SEC. 102. ACTION BY ATTORNEY GENERAL TO PROTECT U.S. CUSTOMERS AND PREVENT U.S. SUPPORT OF FOREIGN INFRINGING SITES.", which would of course NEVER be used against domestic sites.

I remember when my friends and family were imprisoned by the Patriot Act.

Wait...

You are misinformed if you believe that anyone foreign or domestic is "imprisoned by the Patriot Act". The Patriot Act was about surveillance, not imprisonment. And since you brought it up, the Patriot Act has indeed been widely abused. Just as we predicted that it would be.

You're a developer right? You're familiar with "scope creep"? Same thing happens in law.

[Inazuma]

Looks like we may end up winning. Here is the latest news from Demand Progress, an organization that is on our side:

Nobody thought it could be done, but it looks like we've turned the tide against the Internet Blacklist Bill. Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi just spoke out against it, and Republican Darrell Issa says it now stands "no chance of passage"!

It's been a show of force like no other: More than 700k anti-censorship contacts have been delivered to Congress so far this week, as the Blacklsit Bill gets heard in committee.

[YoshiEgg25]

Looks like we may end up winning. Here is the latest news from Demand Progress, an organization that is on our side:

Nobody thought it could be done, but it looks like we've turned the tide against the Internet Blacklist Bill. Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi just spoke out against it, and Republican Darrell Issa says it now stands "no chance of passage"!

It's been a show of force like no other: More than 700k anti-censorship contacts have been delivered to Congress so far this week, as the Blacklsit Bill gets heard in committee.

When Pelosi speaks out against a bill that I also don't support, that usually means the offending bill is batshit crazy.

Good to see nothing's changing.

[YoshiEgg25]

This goes to vote TOMORROW! Go to this website and input your info. A list of talking points will pop up, and you'll immediately get a phone call from them and be automatically connected to your representative's office after about a minute.

Just had a phone call with a lady from Ron Kind's (D-WI) office. Going to get Donald Manzullo (R-IL) next. If I live in two districts, I'm going to take advantage of it.

[fastbilly1]

Sadly my Representative is going to vote for it. I spoke with him a couple years ago about the Internet Radio Bill and gave him a sound argument on why they should not be charged the way they wanted it to be. His response was "just use a normal radio." When I asked him to find me a radio station in the Southeast that plays Gaelic music all day he told me to "get a normal taste in music." At that point I started giving more to the EFF.