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Section 1. [Artificial Entities Such as Corporations Do Not Have Constitutional Rights]
The rights protected by the Constitution of the United States are the rights of natural persons only.
Artificial entities established by the laws of any State, the United States, or any foreign state shall have no rights under this Constitution and are subject to regulation by the People, through Federal, State, or local law.
The privileges of artificial entities shall be determined by the People, through Federal, State, or local law, and shall not be construed to be inherent or inalienable.

Section 2. [Money is Not Free Speech]
Federal, State, and local government shall regulate, limit, or prohibit contributions and expenditures, including a candidate's own contributions and expenditures, to ensure that all citizens, regardless of their economic status, have access to the political process, and that no person gains, as a result of their money, substantially more access or ability to influence in any way the election of any candidate for public office or any ballot measure.
Federal, State, and local government shall require that any permissible contributions and expenditures be publicly disclosed.
The judiciary shall not construe the spending of money to influence elections to be speech under the First Amendment.

See also: www.movetoamend.org

Looks like a good place to leave this: http://www.movetoamend.org.

While the idea, amend vice ignore, is good their proposed amendment is deeply flawed. The language used would not only prohibit corporate speech, thus killing any right to advertise or promote their products unless granted permission by government, it would have the effect of eliminating all rights from any corporation. Including rights of property and many others.

Clearly it was put forth by someone who really just hates corporations for no logical reason while failing to remember that the vast majority of corporations are small affairs who would be destroyed by such a thing just as much as the megaliths they presumably are against.

It is also amusing to me, and has been since the ruling, that no one was up in arms over Unions (frequently corporations themselves) were buying elections and it only became a problem when organizations that were not unions got into the act.

Looks like a good place to leave this: http://www.movetoamend.org.

I'm talking about the actual first amendment. Here is the actual proposal for a 28th amendment, https://movetoamend.org/wethepeopleamendment

I hope you are helping with the solution: https://movetoamend.org/

Money is not speech, corporations are not people.

Right now it's like we are electing whoever can hit one of those bell ringing carnival games the hardest...

Section 1. [Artificial Entities Such as Corporations Do Not Have Constitutional Rights]

The rights protected by the Constitution of the United States are the rights of natural persons only.

Artificial entities established by the laws of any State, the United States, or any foreign state shall have no rights under this Constitution and are subject to regulation by the People, through Federal, State, or local law.

The privileges of artificial entities shall be determined by the People, through Federal, State, or local law, and shall not be construed to be inherent or inalienable.

Section 2. [Money is Not Free Speech]

Federal, State, and local government shall regulate, limit, or prohibit contributions and expenditures, including a candidate's own contributions and expenditures, to ensure that all citizens, regardless of their economic status, have access to the political process, and that no person gains, as a result of their money, substantially more access or ability to influence in any way the election of any candidate for public office or any ballot measure.

Federal, State, and local government shall require that any permissible contributions and expenditures be publicly disclosed.

The judiciary shall not construe the spending of money to influence elections to be speech under the First Amendment.

-- Proposed 28th Amendment

Corporations are not people, and do not get natural rights such as the right to free speech.

A corporation is nothing more than an organized group of people. Since individuals have a right to free speech, then you can't remove their right to free speech simply because they want to use a different name (the corporate name) instead of their own.

Corporations are not people, and do not get natural rights such as the right to free speech.

I suggest you join the Effector mailing list, and have a good strong look at Demand Progress.

I should also point out Move to Amend while I'm plugging these. This one's actually been introduced to congress.

The whole idea of campaign contributions as speech is based upon a court interpretation of the Constitution. As such, it would require an amendment to separate the concept of slipping someone a few bucks from that of petitioning the government for a redress of grievances.

Indeed, and people are working on that.

Might well be a good place to drop this link...

I think that idea is misguided populism. The problem isn't that "corporrations are people too" or that "money is speech" - the problem is the corrupting influence that money brings with it (which, is something I think applies everywhere not just politics, but that's a discussion for another time and place).

I like Lawrence Lessig's idea that we might as well embrace these concepts since they are so popular with the people with influence and they at least give us a framework to build on. His idea is to use these concepts in a form of judo - let people and corps donate all the money they want to politicians, but make them do it anonymously. In short, put all the donated money into a "black box" and then (a) let donors secretly rescind their donations if they want and (b) require the politicians to take all of the donations out of the black box in one big chunk after some period of time.

The idea is to disconnect the money from the influence - you can promise a politician that you are giving a million dollars, but you can't prove it. There is no restriction on speech at all - you can "say" all you want with words or money. You just can't tie the two together in a provable fashion.

Apparently something like this system was tried in an election for judges in south florida - the result was that none of the candidates got a single dime.

Might well be a good place to drop this link...

Yep.

I'd like to take this opportunity to point these guys out, while we are on it. Also these.

Re: Giving democracy a bad name... Having lived in Taiwan for 20 years, believe me, I have my problems with China. But I have to admit, they are going balls-out on the clean-tech front, putting my home country (USA) to shame. They subsidize their solar PV industry so much that they have raised the bar worldwide on price (this is the real reason Solyndra went under, their business model depended on PV cells costing $4/w, but China drove the price down to $1.25/w). They are actively working on molten-salt Thorium fuel nuclear power. They are moving aggressively on electric vehicle adoption. Etc., etc....

By comparison, the US gov't is deadlocked over transferring $4B/yr in subsidies from oil companies (who manifestly don't need them anymore) to R&D in clean energy. But unfortunately our "democracy" has devolved into a sham, with legislation sold to the highest bidder. As just one example, during the healthcare debate a couple of years ago, an overwhelming majority (70-plus percent) favored a "public option" (including 80% of Democrats and around 55% of Republicans), but it was never seriously considered.

Democracy is fantastic when it works, but not so much when it's broken.

Meanwhile, the Chinese gov't is run by technocrats. Our gov't is probably 3/4's lawyers and poli-sci grads; theirs is 3/4's engineers. Obviously they have their share of corruption too, but somehow they have crept ahead of us in some important areas.

Ironically, the USA is boosted by the fruits of its excess... allowing a handful of people to get filthy rich has produced some truly forward-thinking do-gooders like these Planetary Resources guys, Elon Musk, etc.. OTOH, we also have the likes of David Koch to deal with... you win some, you lose some...

Personally, I think the most important thing for the USA right now is to end corporate personhood.

See, this is what happens when we allow corporations to have a 'voice' in politics by spending money on campaign contributions. A law which was suppressed by overwhelming public opposition (SOPA) can creep back into the system because there are some (arguably powerful) corporations in favor of it.

I support (along with a lot of other people) amending the constitution to get rid of this kind of loophole. I think the Move To Amend people got the right idea.

With an amendment like that in place maybe we'd actually see candidates pandering to their constituents instead of whatever corporate interests contributed the most to their campaign fund.

Look at the Business Software Alliance Members

Why would Microsoft and Apple buy Hollywood companies to kill those bills when when they agree with SOPA and PIPA? I don't see them on any of the "companies that oppose SOPA and PIPA" lists. Copyright is even more important for Microsoft and Apple (and the other members of the Business Software Alliance).

I sort-of agree with the article, but unfortunately the game producers (which IMHO are the successors to Hollywood entertainment complex) tend to support those bills! Electronic Arts supports it directly (instead of hiding in the Business Software Alliance, and pretending that they don't support it).

The real problem here is the open floodgates of money (and corruption) since the "Citizens United" Supreme Court ruling that Corporations can contribute unlimited quantities of money to any politician. Congress or these people need to update the McCain/Feingold campaign finance reform law to limit corporate donations to those of an individual. As an individual, I cannot contribute unlimited quantities of money to a politician, so why should a corporation be able to? I don't expect congress to act on this, since they are the recipients of this new orgy of cash.

We need to lobby congress ourselves, or at least donate to these people to lobby on our behalf, in opposition of these bills.

DMCA is an abomination, and these bills take it to the next level of absurdity. There are no technical or legislative measures that can ever prevent all piracy! These MegaCorporations have already eroded our fair use rights with DMCA. They are already censoring free speech and shutting down fair use, with unwarranted DMCA takedown notices. There are no checks and balances to their power, and now they want to turn every citizen of this country into a felon. Enough is enough!

We could kill these bills with two amendments. The first one would be to require a different copyright symbol to apply the new law to a copyrighted work (or a company could go "all in" with all of their copyrighted works). This would be an opt-in arrangement. The second amendment would be to make any copyrighted works subject to these laws have an expiration time of one year from the copyright date. This would kill or neuter the bills. No copyright holder in their right mind would permit their works to expire in one year, even if they had one year of guaranteed "no piracy."

The next thing we need to do is to repeal the CTEA that will effectively make copyright permanent. In its place, the government could put in place a law where copyright extensions are possible, but with a fee that doubles every year, starting at USD $1M per year (from the original pre-CTEA copyright expiration dates). Given the small number of copyrights that this would apply to, a government-run website could easily disseminate a list of works that have had their copyrights extended, such as the original Mickey Mouse Cartoon that caused the CTEA to be enacted. Our government could certainly use the money! All other works not on that list (that have expired due to the original time limits) would then become part of the Public Domain! Copyrights were never intended to be "forever."

Speaking of the head of the dragon, instead of dying out, I would love to see energy instead redirected to end corporate personhood.

Get your people on this, if you want to address the root of this fucking problem:
Move to Amend

... and on that note, this is something you might want to look into then:
We the People, Not We the Corporations

The amendment:

Move to Amend 28th Amendment

Section 1 [A corporation is not a person and can be regulated]

The rights protected by the Constitution of the United States are the rights of natural persons only.

Artificial entities, such as corporations, limited liability companies, and other entities, established by the laws of any State, the United States, or any foreign state shall have no rights under this Constitution and are subject to regulation by the People, through Federal, State, or local law.

The privileges of artificial entities shall be determined by the People, through Federal, State, or local law, and shall not be construed to be inherent or inalienable.

Section 2 [Money is not speech and can be regulated]

Federal, State and local government shall regulate, limit, or prohibit contributions and expenditures, including a candidate’s own contributions and expenditures, for the purpose of influencing in any way the election of any candidate for public office or any ballot measure.

Federal, State and local government shall require that any permissible contributions and expenditures be publicly disclosed.

The judiciary shall not construe the spending of money to influence elections to be speech under the First Amendment.

Section 3

Nothing contained in this amendment shall be construed to abridge the freedom of the press.

Some background (because yes, corporations are made of people, but this does not make them people):

1. Corporate Personhood in a Nutshell

There are two conceptions of corporate personhood. The first simply bestows upon corporations the ability to engage in many legal actions (e.g. enter into contracts, sue, be sued, etc). This is widely accepted and we do not object to this. However, corporate personhood also commonly refers to the Supreme Court - created precedent of corporations enjoying constitutional rights that were intended solely for human beings. We believe this form of corporate personhood corrupts our Constitution and must be corrected by amending the Constitution. Neither the Declaration of Independence nor the Constitution ever mention corporations, which were rare entities at our nation’s founding. But thanks to decades of rulings by Justices who molded the law to favor elite interests, corporations today are granted privileges that empower them to deny citizens the right to full self-governance. For example, the Supreme Court has:

• 
  prohibited routine inspections of corporate property without a warrant or prior permission, even though scheduling such visits may permit a company to hide threats to public health and safety. (Marshall v Barlow’s, 1978)
• 
  struck down state laws requiring companies to disclose product origins (International Dairy v. Amnestoy, [pdf] 1996), thus creating “negative free speech rights” for corporations and preventing us from knowing what’s in our food.
• 
  prohibited citizens wanting to defend their local businesses and community from corporate chains encroachment from enacting progressive taxes on chain stores. (Liggett v. Lee,

Slightly off-topic but if you are asking "what can I do" and you want to get at the root cause, not the symptom, you might want to check out the Move to Amend.

Do you realize if the "Move to Amend" passed, then what Google/Amazon/etc are doing could and would be illegal! Heck, this very Slashdot post would be illegal since it could be construed to influence an election and a forum could be argued as not meeting the criteria as "press".

When they come up with a text for their proposed Amendment, I might take them more seriously.

What did you do, stop reading after 10 words? They have a link to the full text of the amendment on the front page in bold red type. It's right above the map.

As others have said, there is one major presidential candidate who is against SOPA: Ron Paul. I don't personally support Mr. Paul because of unrelated issues, but it's a fact he is opposed to SOPA, to the point of joining the blackout.

Slightly off-topic but if you are asking "what can I do" and you want to get at the root cause, not the symptom, you might want to check out the Move to Amend.

My thoughts exactly. This is getting ridiculous. Unfortunately, I don't think there's any solution as long as government is bought and paid-for by corporations.

Maybe it's time to end corporate personhood?

Either to end corporate personhood or to make corporations have the responsibilities of persons as well as the rights...

My thoughts exactly. This is getting ridiculous. Unfortunately, I don't think there's any solution as long as government is bought and paid-for by corporations.

Maybe it's time to end corporate personhood?

In the US, you're allowed to drop anything you want as long as you ensure that anyone or anything on the ground will not get hurt or damaged from it. That is spelled out in FAR 91.15.

Wow, you don't see common sense lawmaking like that very much any more.

Although some people are still trying to enshrine common sense, I guess.

There is no defense against willful ignorance.

True enough, sadly, but there is a defense against corporate control of our system of law and government. http://movetoamend.org/

Damn right, parent's post is insightful.
Want to fix that? Start here - http://movetoamend.org/
Take the money out of politics and $BIGMEDIA_GUY won't be able to buy horrid (for people) legislation like SOPA and the like.

158 Corporations and $21 Million shouldn't be a surprise. It's the status quo for US politics.

SOPA is just one of the many pieces of legislation being bought and paid for by corporations. So after you write your senators and representatives, go to http://movetoamend.org/ and sign the petition to end corporate personhood!

Want to change that? http://movetoamend.org/
Take the money out of federal politics. It is the only way the citizens of the U.S. can possibly regain control of their government.

http://movetoamend.org/

Want to change that? http://movetoamend.org/
Take the money out of federal politics. It is the only way the citizens of the U.S. can possibly regain control of their government.

http://movetoamend.org/

There is: movetoamend.org. Just don't expect coverage of it on the corporate media.