Senator McCaskill deleted my wall post protesing the Protect IP act

Today, I sent my third email to Senator Claire McCaskill in protest of SOPA/PIPA. I also posted it on the walls of her two Facebook pages so others could see it. Both posts were deleted.

Also, today I learned that my new laptop has a microphone on it, so I didn't need to type all this text out in notepad, I could have just said it out loud. But that is beside the point.

This is the text in the letter I sent:
Please do not support the SOPA ad PIPA bills currently circulating through congress. While I agree that corporations have every right to protect their property from being pirated, these bills attempt to go about doing it in the absolute worst way possible. For one, the text is so vague that a corporation would barely have to try to find a loophole to take down a site that they disagree with. Under SOPA, a court order can be obtained if a site is "committing or facilitating the commission of criminal violations punishable under section 2318, 2319, 2319A, 2319B, or 2320, or chapter 90, of title 18, United States Code." FACILITATING THE COMMISSION. What does that even mean? I play in a band, I could argue that another band is facilitating the commision of pirating my music by promoting their material, because if people spend their money on this other band's music, they would then be out of money and have to pirate my music to listen to it. PIPA has the same problem: if a site is "primarily as a means for engaging in, enabling, or facilitating the activities" or was designed "as a means for engaging in, enabling, or facilitating the activities" of copyright violation. SOPA and PIPA contain no language requiring sites to remove copyrighted information like the current law, but instead focus on CENSORING THEM IMMEDIATELY. Also, this doesn't even prevent piracy. It can only blacklist a site if its DNS is registered in the US, regardless of where the site's servers are hosted. It cacn easily be worked around by getting a foreign DNS, which has far less restrictions in SOPA and PIPA. In conclusion, here is what is wrong with SOPA and PIPA:
1) Weak, loosely specified definitons
2) Weak understanding of foreign vs domestic sites
3) Very little way to prevent it from being abused
4) Excessive punishment. The entire site could be censored because somebody says a trademarked phrase in a video or article.

PLEASE do not support these bills. They will ruin the internet. Also, just a fun fact: The movie industry (One of the biggest industries SOPS and PIPA are going to extremes to protect) grossed $10.9 billion in 2009. That's a lot. Google (ONE COMPANY in the internet business) grossed $29.3 Billion last year. So you are defending (except not really) a dwindling source of income while destroying a newer, better, source.

Category:

Nonprofits & Activism

Tags:

• SOPA
• PIPA
• Senate
• Congress
• Internet
• Censorship
• Facebook
• Claire
• McCaskill