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SSSCA Introduced in Senate
Peter BG Shoemaker writes: "Wired is reporting that Hollings has officially submitted his newly renamed SSSCA, carrying the moniker Consumer Broadband and Digital Television Promotion Act (CBDTPA). It carries all the provisions we've been worrying about...there is a new battlefield folks..." Newsbytes has another story. Reuters has a story about News Corporation and Disney lobbying in support of the bill. I haven't seen the exact text of the bill as introduced; it will probably be in Thomas tomorrow. Update: 03/22 00:12 GMT by M : Declan McCullagh has collected several documents pertaining to the SSSCA, errr, CBDTPA. He's got a faxed copy of the bill (barely legible; read it on Thomas tomorrow), plus statements from Hollings (read it!), the MPAA, the RIAA, and several lobbying groups for the tech industry, who seem less enthralled about it.
The EFF has some good information on what you can do about this.
--Ben
The chairman of the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Intellectual Property Howard Coble (R-North Carolina) opposes the bill and won't bring it up therefore the bill is DOA.
You can get more info over at Wired. That little Disney shill Hollins can try and repay his evil mouse ear masters but it won't avail him...
G. Washington on Government "it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master."
Infortunately, our legislators still do not heed email and faxes to the degree they should. This is probably because such technological marvels facilitate communication to a degree that promotes a deluge of mindless mailings that represent to effort or forethought on the part of the sender.
For this reason, our legislators tend to pay far more attention to writen letters sent by snail mail, not least because mailings are limited to some minor degree by the cost of stamps, and it is currently illegal to impersonate others via postal mail, whereas the same is not true via email.
Faxing your well thought out objections to this bill, might be a good compromise, but I recommend postal mail as the most effective means of communicating with your senators.
If you are unsure of how to contact the senators from your state, Look Here. Also, it would be useful to begin to address this issue in the house as well. The house of representatives has a far more convenient contact mechanism. You can Lookup your Representatives Here.
Remember, do your research, and make coherent arguments. Don't waste the time of our elected oficials. They are not stupid, but simply need to be better informed of the problems with this legislation.
--CTH
--Got Lists? | Top 95 Star Wars Line
Instead of wasting your time and effort sending faxes begginng them not to pass the bill. Consider this, 80 million people used napster in 2000-2001. Thats 80 percent of internet users who DONT want this bill to pass.
Face it, they KNOW we are against it and they dont care. The only way to battle these people, is to battle them on their level.
Go to these sites, give donations, if you dont have the money, host a rally at your local campus to gain money, follow these intructions.
http://digitalspeech.org/
http://www.digitalconsumer.org/bill.html
Donate to
http://eff.org/
Support the lobbying groups on OUR side.
I promise you, a petition will get you NO WHERE! People petitioned against DMCA, people petitioned against the Patriot Act, you think petitions will stop this? You have to have massive rallys, protests with hundreds of thousands of people, donations in the millions of dollars to lobbying groups on our side, and people like the EFF.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
I think probably it would be more useful to worry about the terrible *Canadian* legislation that is working its way through the system, including:
- Canadian Copyright Reform Process
- the proposed new and increased levies from the CPCC
- DRM in Canada
See Music fans face raw copyright dealA higher quality copy of the bill is availible at Cryptome