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Posting on slashdot is all well and good, but the EFF can only continue its work if you support them financially !

I'm a member.. are you?

Note that this is a separate case to the EFF NSA case with the whistleblower from AT&T who provided the schematics showing how all the IX traffic was mirrored to the NSA - that is, they spied on *everyone*, by default. Apparently that's bad news under the US constitution, in theory anyway.

MrMacman2u (831102) wrote in article #22436314:

I'd like to know why this is such a big deal to individual people first off. This system has been in place for more than a decade in most machines and no one has ever said anything before, nor, I believe, has it ever been used to screw someone over OR catch a criminal...

It is a big deal to individuals and small organizations (think human-rights groups) because:

1. This has, for the most part, been kept secret from consumers of these products. Those desiring accountability and openness in the U.S. government are denied. Were the manufacturers coerced into designing that into their systems? Were there kick-backs? We, the people, don't know. Democracy dies behind closed doors.
2. Unless the yellow dot system was listed among the printer's features, the manufacturer is keeping us from being informed consumers. This subverts a free & open market where consumers can purchase the product they think is best for them.
3. When I buy something, it is mine. I am the one responsible for it, so it should not behave in any fashion in which I have not consented. I will not tolerate corporations attempting to monitor, control or subvert my use of my property -- no matter what `good cause` the believe they are serving.
4. Although you do not believe that this particular system has been used to "screw someone over", the truth of the matter is that it could be used for that. Please reference "slippery slope", "unintended consequences", and "scope/feature creep". Sure, it is only intended to catch those mean, nasty counterfeiters... now. Can you promise everybody working in peaceful political groups that it always only be used that way?

In sort, please refer to this EFF article explaining why.

P.S. - If you can get some, print a color page on black paper (preferably semi-gloss), the dots stand out really well

They stand out just fine on white paper under blue light, as one of the EFF pages illustrates.

1. Every color laser printer made in the last 10 years from every manufacturer that I have ever encountered uses the "yellow dots" tagging.

Then I guess you haven't encountered HP 4500 or HP 8500 series printers (maybe they don't need to be repaired as much?). One of the other EFF pages lists a number of other printer models that don't use yellow dots (which isn't to say that they don't use some other kind of tagging).

The ACLU sponsored a poll asking this very question among other interesting ones. Check it out.

The EFF has some handy dandy info on this very subject, http://w2.eff.org/Privacy/printers/docucolor/

I am thinking when Microsoft teaches you something it is more of a brain washing than a lesson. I would be very shocked if the words "Fair Use" are even mentioned in the "lessons" If kids need education about copyright I suggest they visit http://www.eff.org/ , this is the website for the Electronic Frontier Foundation. They are fairly unbiased and have a slant toward fair use and away from things like DRM. Microsoft's view on IP is grossly slanted away from fair use and toward DRM. Anyone that lets their kid get an IP lesson from Microsoft must be sick in the head. Remember that we must build upon past knowledge to move forward, the 90 Year copyright and reduced fair use is retarding our progress and giving a huge advantage to China. Its time to put Mickey Mouse into the public domain and start supporting fair use before we end up with tape over our mouth.

I have no problems with educating kids on copyright law, so long as it's done correctly. In particular, I am opposed to "abstinence only" education. While it is true that abstaining from file sharing is an effective deterrent to its harmful effects (financial ruin, bankruptcy, incarceration if the RIAA gets its way), studies have shown that students in abstinence-only copyright education classes aren't any less likely to download copyrighted materials. Therefore, classes should also cover "safer" downloading practices, which effectively avoid the scrutiny of law-enforcement and reduce chances of being the victim of harmful effects of file-sharing. The use of encrypted connections and anonymizing networks such as Tor, and basic techniques used to procure copyrighted material from newsgroups rather than insecure p2p protocols, etc., would all be covered in a well designed cirriculum.

1. If you put pen to paper and write a concise and reasonable paragraph or two about why it matters to you and send it to your representatives, you bet they will listen. Why? Because they know it's coming from a warm body as opposed to all of the anonymous electronic spam that Political Action Committees stir up. The letter becomes a bellwether of sorts if it is similar to other handwritten letters on the same topic.

Sure

http://www.dslreports.com/forum/r18323368-Comcast-is-using-Sandvine-to-manage-P2P-Connections

http://www.secguru.com/link/comcast_forging_packets_filter_torrents_using_rst_packets

http://www.vgamin.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=279987&sid=39c4843f2be3b4bb0aded7164eed6cab

http://www.eff.org/wp/packet-forgery-isps-report-comcast-affair

Its called the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and they would be pleased to accept your tax deductible donation right now. I have donated money to them each year for the past three (3) years now. I think you will agree, after reviewing their website, that their lobbying efforts have been intelligent, organized, informed, and as their list of successful actions attests, surprisingly effective as well. The professional lobbyist is an inevitable and some would say unfortunate part of our democracy, but the EFF proves that it does not take a fortune to effectively agitate for positive change or resist unwelcome changes. If you can donate even fifty ($50) US dollars on a yearly basis then that would be a useful and powerful statement against the RIAA and other special interest groups who are fighting to take away and roll back your rights and carve out unwarranted new rights and protections for themselves at your expense.

Its called the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and they would be pleased to accept your tax deductible donation right now. I have donated money to them each year for the past three (3) years now. I think you will agree, after reviewing their website, that their lobbying efforts have been intelligent, organized, informed, and as their list of successful actions attests, surprisingly effective as well. The professional lobbyist is an inevitable and some would say unfortunate part of our democracy, but the EFF proves that it does not take a fortune to effectively agitate for positive change or resist unwelcome changes. If you can donate even fifty ($50) US dollars on a yearly basis then that would be a useful and powerful statement against the RIAA and other special interest groups who are fighting to take away and roll back your rights and carve out unwarranted new rights and protections for themselves at your expense.

Depends... Did this man serve on the board of Walmart, did this man vote for funding the war in Iraq (and never apologize for it?) Did this man shred thousands of documents related to a potential scandal? ( http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9D06E6D7163DF93AA35750C0A962958260 )

How does this man compare on civil liberties actions? The other candidate - http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/01/clinton-slams-o.html - looks pretty good. She's never said she opposes widespread wiretapping, unlike the SAFE act (which Obama was vocal for.) http://w2.eff.org/patriot/safe_act_analysis.php for details.

I cannot support Clinton from a policy perspective when we have someone more in line with ideals concerning civil liberties.

From the EFF website:

http://w2.eff.org/IP/P2P/MGM_v_Grokster/20030530_eff_pr.php

"In a landmark 1984 decision called Sony Corporation v. Universal Studios, Inc., the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that creators and distributors of technology could not be held liable under copyright law as long as a technology was capable of substantial non-copyright-infringing uses. Known as the "Betamax doctrine" because the decision upheld Sony's right to sell Betamax video recorders, the court's decision has guided technological innovation for almost two decades."

Granted, we are talking about Swedish law, not US law, but you'd think the principles are the same: If something can be used for non-infringing purposes, it should be legal. Even with the name "The Pirate Bay", the search engine is useful for finding lots of material, not just copyrighted material.

Short of mind reading, I think it would be hard to PROVE the intent of developing the site was to facilitate copyright infringement. Their defense is simple: We saw an unmet need for a specific type of search functionality - a boutique Google if you will, and we developed a business around it.

-ted

If it really bothers you, then e-mail your representative. It might do some good.
      http://action.eff.org/site/Advocacy?id=346
The link is also supplied in the article.

Just because something is against the law doesn't make it wrong. For example, in countries that have more unjust laws than the US, such as China, do the journalists who break the law when they make negative reports about the government "deserve whatever happens" to them?

This is irrelevant to the argument at hand. It is a basis for an argument about a free press and free speech.

The purpose of copyright is not to make anyone money. It is to expand the public domain for the good of the public. Copyright law is meant to serve the public. The constitution says nothing about artists deserving to make any kind of money. It is all about benefiting the public. Current copyright law actually does the opposite of its original purpose: as copyright gets stretched, works never fall into public domain. It is an unjust law that should be broken. As long as politicians are paid off, this unjust law will only get worse. Because of this, I would even argue that it may even be our duty to break copyright law.

Yet another argument based upon some dreamy notion soundly grounded in fantasy. Give this a read over, you might find it contains actual facts as opposed to what you have said.

Sharing our own culture is our right. This has been taken away from us.

Great! I suggest you support them with actual MONEY since they have people who actually know something as opposed to you who live in some sort of fantasy land, although I doubt that they will agree with your position since it is utterly and completely without merit or a basic grounded in logic or facts.

This group is called the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Just because something is against the law doesn't make it wrong. For example, in countries that have more unjust laws than the US, such as China, do the journalists who break the law when they make negative reports about the government "deserve whatever happens" to them?

The purpose of copyright is not to make anyone money. It is to expand the public domain for the good of the public. Copyright law is meant to serve the public. The constitution says nothing about artists deserving to make any kind of money. It is all about benefitting the public. Current copyright law actually does the opposite of its original purpose: as copyright gets stretched, works never fall into public domain. It is an unjust law that should be broken. As long as politicians are paid off, this unjust law will only get worse. Because of this, I would even argue that it may even be our duty to break copyright law.

Sharing our own culture is our right. This has been taken away from us.

This group is called the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

The main story from the EFF blog is dated jan 14th '08

the tacit threat is there, and like all conservative institutions, the schools will doubtless move to implement it to pre-empt further legislation should this make it to the law books.

It's time to take action.

P.S.
I know this wont sit well with you zonk, but the edit job on my submission has more grammatical errors than the blue collar comedy tour. Please fix it : ) ?

Are we still talking about AT&T, or did the conversation move on to the Dubya administration?

They're closely related. In fairness, though, AT&T is much more competent than the Bush administration itself, otherwise we might not have much to fear. "We know where the infringing packets are. They're on the internets and north, south, east, and west somewhat."

Sorry to reply again, but this might be of interest:

5. Is Fair Use a Right or Merely a Defense? Lawyers disagree about the conceptual nature of fair use. Some lawyers claim that fair use is merely a defense to a claim of copyright infringement. Although fair use is often raised as a defense, many lawyers argue that fair use can also be viewed as having a broader scope than this. If fair use is viewed as a limitation on the exclusive rights of copyright holders, fair use can be seen as a scope of positive freedom available to users of copyrighted material. On this view, fair use is the space which the U.S. copyright system recognizes between the rights granted to copyright holders and the rights reserved to the public, where uses of works may or may not be subject to copyright protection. Copyright law gives the decision about whether copyright law applies to a particular use in this space to a Federal Court judge, to decide after weighing up all relevant factors and the underlying policies of copyright law.

I'm the submitter, or one of them. It looks like bits of my submission were merged with the other one to form this article. Glad to see the editors don't mind a little fair use to improve their submissions :) I don't really give a damn if I get attribution.

Anyhow, there's no real apparent money trail on this one in terms of Microsoft buying or commissioning this study. It looks like it's just a fanboyish study from a group that does Microsoft Sharepoint consulting. So they have a dog in the fight, but there are no obvious ties linking them to Microsoft.

In other words, even if I suspect Microsoft, there's no way to prove that they're behind this, so it's simply better journalism to focus on the obvious flaws: there IS a rather broad pattern of manipulation (though not outright vote buying) in the OOXML "standardization" process, they have nothing but speculation about Sun's allegedly bad motives, it IS an objectively crappy standard, etc. There's no reason even to try throwing flimsy allegations their way when there are so many solid ones.

So I don't think know of any way to prove that Microsoft was really behind this study than the fact that it's flawed, and I wouldn't press the issue unless there's some proof. But that's just me.

- I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property

You could just use Tor; that knocks out 2 and 3. I actually find it fast enough for most uses.

Or, y'know, partition your hard drive and not automount the private section. Are they really going to go to enough trouble to find that? Or even to decrypt encrypted files if they're not sitting on the desktop?

Not to say it's a good policy, or that my solution is anything but the oft-maligned security through obscurity, but just being realistic about the IT skill levels and time of TSA screeners.

Maybe I should remove those EFF stickers like "Come back with a warrant" and "P2P is not a crime" ... and instead wrap my laptop in 4th amendement tape...

Sorry I don't have mod points at the moment. Thanks for the essay link to http://deoxy.org/aip.htm

Our business plan is to soon provide an environment for free innovation (the customer is the inventor concept) and push the patent system into where it belongs, a harmless oblivion.

Copyright laws are still important though, as they care for software licences like GPL to not be abused. Regarding creative art, DRM is evil (I don't purchase DRM stuff) and DMCA is pure insanity.

support FFII.org, EFF.org and DefectiveByDesign.org

According to EFF, the date to beat to show prior art is January 19, 1996. In 1994 Microgaming Software Systems released the first online casino in 1994.
http://www.gov.im/ebusiness/microgaming.xml
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microgaming

Any other cited examples of prior art? Help shut down this asshat and contribute your prior art info to: http://w2.eff.org/patent/wanted/contribute.php?p=sheldon

No one, including the RIAA's lawyer, has ever stated or implied or suggested that ripping your own personal copies of CDs to your computer is not a legitimate practice.

Are you joking? The way this sentence is constructed assures that it is false. I'll assume that you meant that there has been no official communication from the RIAA stating that making personal copies of CDs is not a legitimate practice.

This is almost true. I seem to remember a couple incidents to the contrary.

Here is one from February 2006, where the RIAA and other copyright industry associations submitted a filing that included this gem as part of their argument that space-shifting and format-shifting do not count as noninfringing uses, even when you are talking about making copies of your own CDs:
"Nor does the fact that permission to make a copy in particular circumstances is often or even routinely granted, necessarily establish that the copying is a fair use when the copyright owner withholds that authorization. In this regard, the statement attributed to counsel for copyright owners in the MGM v. Grokster case is simply a statement about authorization, not about fair use."

The other incident that springs to mind is the whole DRM on CDs situation. Members of the RIAA were (still are?) releasing "CDs" with DRM to control how you rip the songs to your computer. If they could do this at all effectively then it would be much more widespread right now. What does it matter what they are saying when their actions speak so much louder?

When Ms. Jones has her registration checked against the voter rolls they print the ballot. The ballot could contain encoded information identifying Ms. Jones.

Have a look at; http://www.eff.org/issues/printers

Saving paper sounds good but not at the expense of the secret ballot.

There is nothing "imaginary" about intellectual property. It is the 21-st century and making most things is getting easier every year. Designing things remains hard.

But the fruits of the designer's labor are even easier to duplicate than to implement. Copying them without the creator's permission is just as immoral (and often illegal) as the traditional stealing is.

The submitter seems to imply, the non-tangible property is entirely "imaginary" and thus one can choose to "believe" in it — or not... He also links to a page of a perfectly respectable organization, which has nothing in common with his inflammatory "name"...

Now I have noticed, on a family member's HP, that it is printing color even when a page is pure black text. This seems particularly wasteful to me, and when I looked at it, I couldn't figure out if it was a setting, or just fantastically poor design decisions.

That'll be the tracking dots:

If it were a narrow bill specifically exempting telecomm employees from personal liability it might be worth discussing. But this bill is mainly about protecting telecomm companies from having to pay out monetary damages in large class-action lawsuits, like the one the EFF filed against AT&T.

Congress is working on reforms to the FISA bill to be enacted before the expiration of the current legislation. On November 15, 2007, the House of Representatives passed H.R. 3773, the "Responsible Electronic Surveillance That is Overseen, Reviewed, and Effective Act of 2007" (RESTORE Act) by a vote of 227-189. The House bill does not provide retroactive immunity for private companies that may have participated in the illegal collection of personal information, nor does it provide immunity for administration officials who may have acted illegally. The Senate committees on Intelligence and the Judiciary have since approved proposals with their own reforms to FISA. The debate over retroactive immunity is still ongoing, and I will support a filibuster should legislation that includes such a provision come to the Senate floor.

The EFF has a web form for submitting comments to your senators.

Don't let AT&T off the hook:

https://secure.eff.org/site/Advocacy?cmd=display&page=UserAction&id=337

...after the senate votes and possibly grants them retroactive immunity. Might be a good idea to contact your representatives and remind them that it's not in the best interests of remaining a functional country to encourage people or corporations to break the law. :)
The EFF has this nifty form to submit e-mails to your senators, but I think phoning or faxing might be more effective at the last minute.

So, my point: before posting a rant about the fascist big brother state that rules from beyond the centre of the Ultraworld, for heaven's sake take some actions to register your protest, and to work against it. This is the real freedom for which more abstract things like the right to not have your comms intercepted by the government. No-one's going to kick your door in at 5am and drag you off to Cuba for it, not yet anyway -(sadly I have to now include the disclaimer "unless you're very unlucky" :( ) There are 300,000-something EFF members and many more supporters, and we haven't ALL been arrested, not yet anyway ;)

Please, stick your hand in your pocket and send 'em $30 or whatever you can. Join, if you can afford it.

We now return you to the Soviet Russia jokes, tinfoil hat conspiracy theories and hair-splitting arguing the toss about the precise spec of the optical splitters being used in San Francisco.

So, my point: before posting a rant about the fascist big brother state that rules from beyond the centre of the Ultraworld, for heaven's sake take some actions to register your protest, and to work against it. This is the real freedom for which more abstract things like the right to not have your comms intercepted by the government. No-one's going to kick your door in at 5am and drag you off to Cuba for it, not yet anyway -(sadly I have to now include the disclaimer "unless you're very unlucky" :( ) There are 300,000-something EFF members and many more supporters, and we haven't ALL been arrested, not yet anyway ;)

Please, stick your hand in your pocket and send 'em $30 or whatever you can. Join, if you can afford it.

We now return you to the Soviet Russia jokes, tinfoil hat conspiracy theories and hair-splitting arguing the toss about the precise spec of the optical splitters being used in San Francisco.

You probably meant this

https://secure.eff.org/site/Advocacy?JServSessionIdr012=muzeh04ws1.app8a&cmd=display&page=UserAction&id=299 This is sickening. Make some noise people.

According to the US Copyright Office, "You are not permitted under section 117 to make a backup copy of other material on a computer's hard drive, such as other copyrighted works that have been downloaded (e.g., music, films).". Hmmm. That pretty much blows my argument out of the water entirely as far as the US is concerned. Section 107 could be relevant (especially if you believe the EFF), but the wording is ridiculously vague.

I'm going to shut up now, and I'd like someone who actually know about this to explain to what extent US copyright law allows copying for personal use without authorisation.

After the Comcast bittorrent interference, the Electronic Freedom Foundation released a tool called pcapdiff. The idea is you capture what your ISP sends you for a given website using wireshark/tcpdump and compare it to what your friend gets for the same site. Pcapdiff diffs the two pcap files and reports discrepencies.

On Fedora you can do "yum install pcapdiff".

It's an early release, but there's bound to be a lot more uses for pcapdiff ahead...

I also sent an email (and sent a carbon copy via post ... hardcopy gets much more attention from politicians!). I don't live anywhere near Calgary either (Ottawa, in fact), but I definitely felt strongly enough about the issue to write to him.

Below is the text of what I sent:

--

Dear Hon. Jim Prentice:

I regret that I am unable to attend your open-house session tomorrow, 08 Dec 2007, in person; however, I would like to take this opportunity to express my concern over a proposed piece of legislation regarding Canadian copyright, namely the so-called "Canadian DMCA".

I work as an IT professional, however my background is in pure Computer Science. I often spend time performing security research. A Canadian version of the US DMCA legislation greatly concerns me -- one needs to look no further than the 'US v. Elcomsoft & Sklyarov' case to see why.

References: http://w2.eff.org/IP/DMCA/US_v_Elcomsoft/us_v_sklyarov_faq.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dmitry_Sklyarov

In this instance, legitimate security research was suppressed, and the researcher arrested at the will of a large corporation. Rather than acknowledge & fix the weaknesses in their product's security, Adobe chose to use the DMCA as a sledgehammer to suppress disclosure of information they did not like.

This has obvious chilling effects -- as an analogue, if a researcher were to find a weakness in the encryption used for e.g. online banking, is it reasonable to arrest the researcher rather than fix the weakness? To my mind, it is infinitely preferable to acknowledge, fix, and continuously improve security through legitimate research. Those with criminal intent will search for these weaknesses in any event -- it is much better to discover and fix the issues in a transparent manner. As the saying goes, "When guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns." hold very true here.

Other kinds of DMCA abuse is well-documented and widespread. A few simple Google searches (e.g. "DMCA abuse") very quickly turn up many sources of information. This legislation has been used to suppress reviews or opinions which are negative towards large companies -- technically, these should be handled as a civil lawsuit for slander or libel (if they are, in fact, untrue); however, many large corporations choose to invoke a DMCA takedown notice instead, as it forces the content hoster to take down the material immediately, rather than waiting for a judgement from a court of law. It is important to note that it is *corporations* that send these takedown notices, not the courts. Under this model, 'justice' is a distant wish.

There was some research done in 2005 by the University of South Carolina which showed that 30% of DMCA takedown notices sent by corporations were improper, and even potentially illegal (unfortunately, the document seems to have been taken offline, or moved, but the previous URL was http://lawweb.usc.edu/news/releases/2005/legalFlaws.html). This is a stunningly high figure -- laws are traditionally written to ensure that there is an onus of proof before charges are filed, and that due legal process is followed. The rules of jurisprudence are critical to ensure the equitable operation of any society, but overly broad, overly powerful laws like the US DMCA allow companies with deep legal pockets to run rampant, and allows them to run a private campaign of fear and intimidation.

I wish to point out that I am not pro-piracy, but rather am opposed to legislation (and legislators) funded or supported by corporations. This is the very antithesis of a democracy, and is the current state in the US. Canada is already dangerously close to that abyss, and I do not wish to

That's just to the EFF, here is the actual article in question.

Here is the EFF Link that should be in the article summary: http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2007/12/pro-ip-act-increase-infringement-penalties-and-drastically-expand-government-enfor

Fixed.

Below is the text of what I've sent in (via email and CC: via letter mail) to Jim Prentice. Feel free to copy/modify it to suit your needs/views.

---

Hon. Jim Prentice:

I regret that I am unable to attend your open-house session tomorrow, 08 Dec 2007, in person; however, I would like to take this opportunity to express my concern over a proposed piece of legislation regarding Canadian copyright, namely the so-called "Canadian DMCA".

I work as an IT professional, however my background is in pure Computer Science. I often spend time performing security research. A Canadian version of the US DMCA legislation greatly concerns me -- one needs to look no further than the 'US v. Elcomsoft & Sklyarov' case to see why.

References: http://w2.eff.org/IP/DMCA/US_v_Elcomsoft/us_v_sklyarov_faq.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dmitry_Sklyarov

In this instance, legitimate security research was suppressed, and the researcher arrested at the will of a large corporation. Rather than acknowledge & fix the weaknesses in their product's security, Adobe chose to use the DMCA as a sledgehammer to suppress disclosure of information they did not like.

This has obvious chilling effects -- as an analogue, if a researcher were to find a weakness in the encryption used for e.g. online banking, is it reasonable to arrest the researcher rather than fix the weakness? To my mind, it is infinitely preferable to acknowledge, fix, and continuously improve security through legitimate research. Those with criminal intent will search for these weaknesses in any event -- it is much better to discover and fix the issues in a transparent manner. As the saying goes, "When guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns."

Other kinds of DMCA abuse is well-documented and widespread. A few simple Google searches (e.g. "DMCA abuse") very quickly turn up many sources of information. This legislation has been used to suppress reviews or opinions which are negative towards large companies -- technically, these should be handled as a civil lawsuit for slander or libel (if they are, in fact, untrue); however, many large corporations choose to invoke a DMCA takedown notice instead, as it forces the content hoster to take down the material immediately, rather than waiting for a judgement from a court of law. It is important to note that it is *corporations* that send these takedown notices, not the courts. Under this model, 'justice' is a distant wish.

There was some research done in 2005 by the University of South Carolina which showed that 30% of DMCA takedown notices sent by corporations were improper, and even potentially illegal (unfortunately, the document seems to have been taken offline, or moved, but the previous URL was http://lawweb.usc.edu/news/releases/2005/legalFlaws.html). This is a stunningly high figure -- laws are traditionally written to ensure that there is an onus of proof before charges are filed, and that due legal process is followed. The rules of jurisprudence are critical to ensure the equitable operation of any society, but overly broad, overly powerful laws like the US DMCA allow companies with deep legal pockets to run rampant, and allows them to run a private campaign of fear and intimidation.

I wish to point out that I am not pro-piracy, but rather am opposed to legislation (and legislators) funded or supported by corporations. This is the very antithesis of a democracy, and is the current state in the US. Canada is already dangerously close to that abyss, and I do not wish to see us fall in completely.

*Original* creators of artistic works certainly desire to be paid for their works; it is for this reason that I attend live concerts, purchase T-s

...hence the lopsided vote. EFF has the insights no the rest of this bill. This is a "poison pill" amendment to the Ron Paul's of the world, but it's a small price to pay for passing the rest of this legislation.