SOPA/PIPA et al
My laptop died last week so I haven't been on LJ (not really SFW) so I came back to a torrent of protest on my friends page. I'll say here what I said on Facebook: petition signatures have maybe a tenth of the impact as a phone call. Congressional staffers count phone calls differently and presume that for every person who took the time to call, there's a dozen who feel the same way and didn't call. Also, the old fogies who don't understand the internet (and thus are quite comfortable breaking it without even realizing) put more stock in phone calls (personal visits are even better, but difficult if you have responsibilities like a job).
Check to see if your senators and representative have already stated a position: http://www.propublica.org/nerds/item/sopa-opera-update and call them and let them know you live in their district (give them your name and zip code).
It pays to show that you're paying attention to whether they're a co-sponsor or undecided or have recently come out against the bills (in which case thank them and urge them to oppose any new versions or similar bills as well.)
SOPA/PIPA will be brought back up next month with a few tweaks in the hope that the public attention will have faded by then.
Edit - one thing I have to add because people have not been addressing this: Congress and the news have been throwing around a lot of numbers claiming piracy costs the economy billions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of jobs. Let me make clear: THESE NUMBERS ARE COMPLETE BULLSHIT. Hollywood pulled them out of its ass and has NEVER been able to substantiate these claims. Simple logic tells you they are lying. One, most people who consume content for free would not pay full monopoly prices for all of that content. They might go to a few more movies or buy a few more albums, but they're not going to buy 300 CDs. The movie and music industries are only losing a marginal amount of revenue. This is even more true in countries where the price of a DVD is a month's salary. Two, the money people don't spend on movie tickets doesn't just vanish, people spend it on something else--food or clothing or video games. It's still going into the economy, just a different sector. Same thing with jobs. The websites that have possibly infringing content? They have employees too. How many people work for YouTube? Facebook? Hell, even the websites that have employees make unauthorized copies actually have employees. In the end, its not about the economy or jobs, its just about Hollywood and music producers looking to make a bigger profit. At the expense of everyone else.
Check to see if your senators and representative have already stated a position: http://www.propublica.org/nerds/item/sopa-opera-update and call them and let them know you live in their district (give them your name and zip code).
It pays to show that you're paying attention to whether they're a co-sponsor or undecided or have recently come out against the bills (in which case thank them and urge them to oppose any new versions or similar bills as well.)
SOPA/PIPA will be brought back up next month with a few tweaks in the hope that the public attention will have faded by then.
Edit - one thing I have to add because people have not been addressing this: Congress and the news have been throwing around a lot of numbers claiming piracy costs the economy billions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of jobs. Let me make clear: THESE NUMBERS ARE COMPLETE BULLSHIT. Hollywood pulled them out of its ass and has NEVER been able to substantiate these claims. Simple logic tells you they are lying. One, most people who consume content for free would not pay full monopoly prices for all of that content. They might go to a few more movies or buy a few more albums, but they're not going to buy 300 CDs. The movie and music industries are only losing a marginal amount of revenue. This is even more true in countries where the price of a DVD is a month's salary. Two, the money people don't spend on movie tickets doesn't just vanish, people spend it on something else--food or clothing or video games. It's still going into the economy, just a different sector. Same thing with jobs. The websites that have possibly infringing content? They have employees too. How many people work for YouTube? Facebook? Hell, even the websites that have employees make unauthorized copies actually have employees. In the end, its not about the economy or jobs, its just about Hollywood and music producers looking to make a bigger profit. At the expense of everyone else.