Slashdot Mirror
SOPA Creator In TV/Film/Music Industry's Pocket
First time accepted submitter en4bz writes "Representative Lamar Smith, the creator of the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), has been consistently receiving donations averaging $50 000 from the TV/Film/Music industry for each of his re-election campaigns for the past ten years. Smith has received roughly half a million dollars from the TV/Film/Music lobby over the past ten years according to opensecrets.org. Check out the source link for a full breakdown of donors to Smith's campaigns."
Speaking of SOPA, new submitter DarkStar1O9 submits this "explanation in simple terms of why this dangerous new bill in congress could result in the extinction of sites that are based on user-generated content like YouTube, Reddit, and StumbleUpon." Update: 12/18 20:42 GMT by T : An anonymous reader writes "Eric S. Raymond weighs in on SOPA and the question of why so many people hate this bill and not the dozens of others just like it that get passed on a regular basis."
No, corruption is when you can determine that definite “pay to play” or vote buying has happened. That is nothing at all like lobbying. The entertainment industry has every right to convince people of their opinion and support those candidates that support their causes. What you’re advocating for seems to be some archaic form of government where no expert opinions can be brought to bear on politicians. Are you actually espousing that congressional representatives already have some innate expertise on every issue that would preclude their being informed by expert lobbyists? By that logic, I can simply go outside of my house and feel what the weather is like to get a bearing for my opinion of climate change. Why should I, or any representative, fall into the trap of listening to highly trained climate scientists who use government funds and promote a message that requires more and more government funds be funneled their way? Lobbying is an efficient and effective way of bringing expertise and nuance into the government’s sphere that otherwise wouldn’t be there.
Well, it is all well and good to bring in so called "expertise and nuance" into government so that legislators can make informed decisions. So can I assume that you would be OK with eliminating campaign contributions from these so called experts? Because if not, what you wrote is a bunch of BS and just a convenient excuse for buying off politicians.
That is certainly an option (not one I would choose, but a resonable option nonetheless), but then you have eliminate all campaign contributions from all groups/people/PACs/etc... If you're going to go fascist and depreive one group of their freedom of speech, then you have to deprive them all.