Contact Your Senator and Rep About The SSSCA

Irvu writes: "The Electronic Frontier Foundation has an Action Alert on the SSSCA along with a sample letter. They are urging you to send it, or a variant of it, to your Senators and House reps. Click here to locate your rep's Homepage complete with Phone #'s. Click here to send e-mail to your House Rep. Click here for the Senate Homepages. And click here for their e-mail addresses. Personally I would suggest faxing or calling your reps or at least their local offices. Wads of paper and well-prepared phone calls seem to make more of an impression on them than e-mail. However you do it, it would be good for them to hear from the actual 'consumers' that they are so eager to malign/protect."

Comments

Not to be a party pooper...

[Masem]

Note the date on the Action Alert; Issued Sep 2001, to expire Oct 2001. This is about when the SSSCA bill was 'leaked' to the net.

Not that pro-active writing can't hurt, but if you look at the various tidbits that came out today, it appears that Hollings will hold back on SSSCA as a threat to tech industry, saying that if they don't help with DRM, they he'll introduce the bill and let the 'fun' begin. Which means that *at this time*, SSSCA as a bill in Congress doens't exist. In fact, say a few more months down the road, things aren't working out and Hollings decides to introduce it, the bill's name might be changed, or similar action. And thus, warning your Senator or Congressman about a non-existant bill might go unheard.

It's still not unreasonable to write them now, telling them how you feel about the overpowering of commercial interests and refer to comments made of late about this situation, but now's not the critical time; only until the bill is put befiore the committees prior to going to the full house is when letters will be most effective.

If your senator's on this list, send them mail!

[leviramsey]

These senators are on the Commerce Committee, which is where the SSSCA currently has hearings. If we can nip it in committee, then that's really good!

• Ernest Hollings
• Daniel Inouye
• John D Rockefeller, IV
• John Kerry
• John Breaulx
• Byron Dorgan
• Ron Wyden
• Max Cleland
• Barbara Boxer
• John Edwards
• Jean Carnahan
• Bill Nelson
• John McCain
• Ted Stevens
• Conrad Burns
• Trent Lott
• Kay Bailey Hutchinson
• Olympia Snowe
• Sam Brownback
• Gordon Smith
• Peter Fitzgerald
• John Ensign
• George Allen

If you live in Oregon, I notice that it's absolutely critical that you get in on this: both of your senators are on the committee!

Also, Barbara Boxer is critical. The interests in Hollywood will try to convince her. If you live in the Valley, send her mail! If she sees large numbers of voters from the Bay Area pushing against this, she'll at least abstain.

I'm going to add this line because of the incompetent lameness filter.... People at slashcode should be working on this. I'd help, but I don't know Perl, just PHP.

Guess the lyric: "Hate the way you act, and I hate the way you smell. Hate the way you look, girl, 'cause you just look like hell. You make me sick! You really stink, girl."

Important Stuff: Please try to keep posts on topic. Try to reply to other people comments instead of starting new threads. Read other people's messages before posting your own to avoid simply duplicating what has already been said. Use a clear subject that describes what your message is about. Offtopic, Inflammatory, Inappropriate, Illegal, or Offensive comments might be moderated. (You can read everything, even moderated posts, by adjusting your threshold on the User Preferences Page). Jesus Christ, still not enough characters per line. People will think that I'm sort of page-widening troll or something. Moderators, this is just to counteract an incompetency in the Slashcode. I hope that you don't hold this against me. Your comment has too few characters per line (currently 20.7). Apparently 21.4 characters isn't enough. Nor is 21.8. CmdrTaco, Krow, and anybody else involved in the lameness filter, please accept this as an example of why the lameness filter is broken. I mean, I've had to double the length of this post with filler material because that's the only way that a post which I think is genuinely informative, insightful, or both (and I hope the moderators agree with me on this). I'll be filing this in a bugreport to Slashcode. If you are reading this and have editorial priveleges, you might want to consider editing this crap out of the post, starting with "I'm going to add this line to". My God, 28.1 characters/line is not enough for you people. I'm beginning to think that some sort of black mark has been placed next to my name. The lameness filter ends up adding lameness... maybe it should be cleaned once in a while. In da CD player right now is "I Think I Lost My Headache", by Queens of the Stone Age, off of their album Rated R. After some connection issues from UMass to Cable and Wireless, I'm back here, with a 31.8 character/line post and just utter crap dominating this post. I don't give a fuck what Slashcode says, I'm posting this bad boy. Now it's 34.1 characters/line and Apocalyptica's rendition of "Refuse-Resist", off of the album Inquisition Symphony is playing. I highly recommend this CD, along with the other two Apocalyptica CDs. Now, at 36.3 charcters per line, Queen's "Another One Bites the Dust" is playing. Did you know that Freddie Mercury died from AIDS over a decade ago? Now coming up is a song from an artist I don't know the name of, but it's titled "I Want to Marry a Lighthouse Keeper", off of the soundtrack to A Clockwork Orange, an amazing film by Stanley Kubrick. You know, another amazing film which spawned a great video game was Goldeneye, and we've got a great jazz bit inspired by the game. I'ts Goldeneye - Controlled Jazz, by Scott Peeples. I'm sure lots of peoples out there will be tapping their toes to this. If you have any requests or dedications, you can just post a reply, and I'll try to get them. Goatsex trolls not accepted.

Don't write your Congressmen

[NumberSyx]

Thats right, Don't bother. Instead write to the CEO's of the companies that make our computers. Michael Dell has alot of clout, when he talks, people listen, including President Bush. If he and his fellow CEO's can be convinced that the SSSCA is bad for business, they themselves will lobby congress for us. CEO's get alot less mail than Politicians, they also take Email seriously. To a Politician we are a small demographic, easily ignored, but to Michael Dell and his peers, we are customers, or potential customers, we are their bread and butter, we are the ones who pay for thier $20 million dollar houses. If each one of the CEO's of the top 5 OEM's recieves even a 1000 emails, they will listen. As always, be polite, be clear, but make them understand, that we vote with our money.