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SOPA Makes Strange Bedfellows
davide marney writes "What do 1-800-Contacts, Adidas, Americans for Tax Reform, Comcast, the Country Music Association, Estee Lauder, Ford, Nike and Xerox all have in common? According to OpenCongress.org, they all have specifically endorsed H.R. 3261, the Stop Online Piracy Act. A total of 158 corporations have signed up in favor of the bill, and only 87 against. $21 Million has been donated to Congressmen who favor the bill, but only $5 Million to those against. Thanks to OpenCongress for these insights. This goes a long way towards explaining why this bill has so much traction, despite all its negative publicity."
And nothing more.
Write to your senators, your representatives! Tell them you oppose this bill!
http://www.opencongress.org/contact_congress_letters/new?bill=112-h3261&position=oppose
Tell your family, friends, even the guy at the gas station to do the same!
This bill WILL get passed if we don't make our position clear to elected officials!
vos nescitis quicquam, nec cogitatis quia expedit nobis ut unus moriatur homo pro populo et non tota gens pereat.
Go after the companies that are supporting the bill as well. Look what happened to GoDaddy when it was found out they were supporting it. Imagine what happens when companies like 1800contacts, Ford, Adidas and others start getting consumers telling them to drop support as well or lose business.
Business funds Congress... if they start saying no, Congress will say no too.
You need to put it into terms they'll understand:
The Honorable [congresscritter]:
I see you are supporting SOPA. If I may, let me clarify some issues that will change your mind about your support.
For one, online piracy is all done by the Somalis. They have not gone online and don't plan to: there are no ships online and they can't put them online. There hasn't been any ship hijackings online and as you know, pirating a ship with ones computer is ludicrous.Ships don't travel on the internet! They can't get into the tubes!
Secondly, I really don't like making accusations, but the folks who are behind this bill have been lying to you. They have ulterior motives and will make a fool of you.
Yours,
A tech savvy constituent.
Just look at these amounts :
Sen. Harry Reid [D, NV] $3,502,624
Sen. Charles Schumer [D, NY] $2,648,770
Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand [D, NY] $2,080,651
I wonder how much Obama got ... in the beginning of an election year no less. What do you think Obama > Harry Reid or the reverse ?
Weird, weird names on the list though :
* United States Tennis Association
* Council of state governments
* National Confectioners Association
* Major City Chiefs
* Let Freedom Ring
* Outdoor Industry Association
* Small Business and Entrepreneurship Council
* Eli Lilly and Company
* Center for Individual Freedom
* Concerned Women for America
* Americans for Tax Reform
* Society of Plastics Industry
* Beam Global Spirits &Wine
Half of these sound extremely fake. Most of these look like it's VERY unlikely they would get themselves on this list if it didn't gain them money ...
Not that I tell myself these guys collectively contributed even 1% of those amounts ... very strange names here. Were the pressured into signing this ? There's another collection of names that clearly were pressured to get in there (National Electrical Manufacturers Association ... are these names just an attempt to point "broad support" or ? Weird weird weird.
, Electronic Components Industry Association)
Interesting though : all but one electronics manufacturers are in the opposing category ... /me suspects threats from customers. All think tanks, democrat or republican, are on the opposing side. So clearly both parties are aware of the publicity loss. Lots of the organisations supporting this bill are subsidiaries of other supporters (so the supporter list shoulds be a LOT shorter). WTF is visa doing supporting these guys ?
Some organisations could have contributed more by staying out of it, me thinks :
* 4chan
* Torrentfreak
* Tumblr
(let's just say people might think they know why these guys are opposed, and it's not for the right reasons)
And, surprisingly in the "opposing" category (although I must admit this legislation doesn't strike me as conservative, and it doesn't seem like it's supported by the software industry either, it's almost purely privilege grab by the entertainment industry) :
* Business Software Alliance (also known as Microsoft)
* Brookings Institute
* Competitive Enterprise Institute
On the one hand, I can see the point of view of the designers who are annoyed about the counterfeiting of their product.
On the other hand, what does it say about the actual value of their designs? It says that people are not willing to pay the prices they demand for the somewhat ephemeral value that their design commands.
It used to be that artisans had makers marks because their product was of superior quality and they wished to differentiate it. People seeing the superior quality of the product and desiring that quality for themselves would see the makers mark and know where they could get an item of similar quality.
Quality is no longer the differentiation though - price is. The relationship has inverted ; a maker no longer puts their mark on something to identify the maker of the product and generate sales, he puts the mark on to increase the perceived value of the product. As some people are no doubt pointing out - a lot of the so-called "counterfeit" product is made on the same production line, from the same materials, by the same workers using the same amount of labour.
There is no difference in the intrinsic value of the product - it's the same material object with the same properties - so why can Loius Vuitton sell it for more than Mr Chang? Because Loius Vuitton inflates the perception of value of their products in ways that have nothing to do with their actual utility - they put them in a swanky shop with a flunky on the door, they don't pile them high, and they don't sell them cheap.
The real counterfeit is therefore the perceived value of the "genuine" product - people are buying fake value. This is not an artisan product made by a skilled craftsman. This is a product designed to be made as piecework in a third world sweatshop - a product that by definition, has to be makable by the lowest common denominator of skill.
It's a goddamn crime that the list of those supporting this heinous, un-American tyranny is topped with giant corporations. Multinational corporations. Foreign corporations.
These foreign non-people should have absolutely no influence over the laws set by the government of the United States. The legitimate government is by, of and for the people, not the people's property like corporations.
The Constitution does not give the government any power to represent corporations. But even from the beginning the Constitution has needed amendments that spelled out for corrupt government officials the limits to its power that were not already spelled out: the Bill of Rights. The Bill of Rights shouldn't have been necessary, because the powers it prohibits aren't granted in the original document. But obviously it was necessary; obvious when it was written and passed, and obvious ever since as it must be constantly invoked when government reaches across its bounds. It's clear by now that we need to amend the Constitution to spell out that corporations aren't people. That they don't have rights, that the government can restrict their actions with the existing powers government has.
There is already such an amendment in the works. Closing in on 200,000 people have already signed on supporting it. You should too. If you're a person, anyway. Why suffer being a second class citizen behind corporations that aren't even people?
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make install -not war