This is what I wrote for the Red Hat page and to the Senator's email.
This bill would do nothing less than destroy the first amendment freedoms we have enjoyed. The government would be in control as to how digital and computer equipment is made and used. This is against everything we stand for, and this is all done so that the record industry and the movie studios can stop the piracy of their material. Going this far is tantamount to swatting a fly with a 30 pound sledgehammer. The open source community would suffer as well. The free exchange of ideas and code that is enjoyed would come to an end. Even distributing a section of code that contains the so called security measures could land you in jail for a substantial amount of time. You would be labeled a criminal and subjected to years of legal hassles just because you wrote some code that the government didn't like. I agree that piracy is wrong, but must we give up our basic rights in order to eliminate it? No. We already have in place rules and regulations that deal with piracy, be it a song, movie or a piece of software. We should spend more time enforcing these instead of conceiving more draconian laws that threaten to strip away our rights in the name of profit.
It is interesting that Senator Fritz Hollings' (Dem.-S.Carolina) major contributors in this matter are the music and film industry. I would hate to see the day where corporations are the ones making the laws and handing out the punishment. We have already seen a taste of what damage this can do with the DMCA, with its overbearing force brought down on so-called hackers, such as the case with Dmitry Sklyarov, someone who only exposed a weakness in an encryption scheme, now is facing jail time.
As a voter, I will discourage all of my friends and associates from voting for anyone who supports such measures like the SSSCA. I feel that it is not in the peoples' best interest, but such laws only exist for the big corporations at the expense of basic American freedoms. Anyone who would stand up and fight such measures would earn my trust, admiration, and more importantly, my vote.
I am not alone in my feelings. The Internet is a powerful tool and it has brought together thousands if not millions against those who would make such a disgraceful bill into law. I believe we have caught this early enough so that we can affect a positive change for the greater good. We will be heard and our voices can make a difference. Anyone who thinks otherwise is about to have a rude awakening.
I thank you for your time.
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What do you think?