Anyone who values American freedom of speech, and anyone who values American economic vitality, should be worried about the so-called “Stop Internet Piracy Act” which is now being considered by Congress. While Internet-based intellectual property theft is indeed a problem, the proposed remedies seem to me, and to many others, to be quite dangerous. If you’re not familiar with this issue, please familiarize yourself with it–and if the bill bothers you, contact your Congressman. Apparently, this bill is going into markup tomorrow (Thursday).
Some resources:
—Wikipedia summary of SOPA
–A statement by the Electronic Frontier Foundation
–A statement by Google chairman Eric Schmidt
–A summary of lobbying efforts for and against this bill
It is another Congressional power grab, awarding benefits to supporters. There are many similar examples, many well know such as the satellite cellphone provider that is trying to use crony capitalist connections.
The Congressional sponsors of SIPA are to Internet pirates what Lord Cutler Beckett is to Jack Sparrow. The biggest pirates aren’t private-sector.
A book I’ve been meaning to review here is Tim Wu’s “The Master Switch”…it’s about the history of several communications/media industries, including telephone, movies, radio, TV, and Internet….especially focused on the use of government regulation as a competitive weapon.
Clearly our representatives don’t represent us,but those who “help” them. Perhaps all legislation should finally have to be approved by a panel of randomly selected taxpayers from the private sector. There is no representatively based system which hasn’t been co-opted by the parasitic classes with the possible exception of Switzerland, the only genuinely federal system extant.