SOPA Makes Strange Bedfellows 439
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."
Stand up, people! (Score:5, Informative)
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 [opencongress.org]
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!
Re:I guess I don't understand... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Government is for SOPA (Score:0, Informative)
You may be correct, but like most Fox News watchers, you're missing the point. Specifically:
1. Obama is a corporate friendly statist with the very occasional progressive idea or two. Portraying him as a liberal or a progressive is very much a "please don't throw me in he briar patch" trick conservatives like to use.
2. There's always this implication that somehow having a true believer whackjob conservative in there will make things better, despite extreme amounts of recent history that say otherwise.
So, if you want to say that liberals and progressives should be disappointed with Obama, go right ahead. His problem is that he's not what we want him to be, and he's not what you fear either.
A true liberal would never go for this crap. Post-Reagan conservatives with their unquestioning military and cop worshipping seem to want to give law enforcement anything and everything they want, so they're no help either. A true conservative would never go for this crap either, what few are left, so what does this say about our alleged "leadership" these days?
Re:Stand up, people! (Score:5, Informative)
Thank you for contacting me regarding intellectual property theft. I appreciate hearing from you and I appreciate the opportunity to respond.
S.968, the Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property (PROTECT IP) Act of 2011, was introduced by Senator Leahy (D-VT) on May 12, 2011, and was referred to the Senate Judiciary Committee. On May 26, 2011, it was reported out of Committee and is currently pending in the Senate. The bill targets websites, particularly those registered outside of the United States, which are "dedicated to infringing activities." These rogue websites typically offer unauthorized downloading or streaming of copyrighted content or the sale of counterfeit goods including music, movies, and pharmaceutical drugs.
Websites targeted by this bill are foreign owned and outside the reach of U.S. laws despite the fact U.S. intellectual property is being infringed upon and U.S. consumers are the targets. Rogue websites cost American workers jobs and cost businesses millions of dollars in lost revenue. As online technology and commerce advances, we must see to it that injured parties have the ability to stop infringers from profiting from counterfeit products. For example, a victim of infringement will have the authority to file a civil action against the owner or registrant of a rogue site. If an order is granted by the court, third parties will be required to stop processing payments from the infringing sites, therefore, preventing infringers from collecting payments. I will work to ensure that our laws our modernized to protect intellectual property, and will keep your thoughts on this bill in mind should it come before the Senate for a vote.
Re:Stand up, people! (Score:4, Informative)
Yeah, imagine that. The top states that are supporting this :
* New York (2x)
* Nevada
* California
* Massachusetts
And the top counties :
* Richmond, Virginia
* Los Angeles, California (ie. Silicon Valley) (TWICE)
* Washington environs, Maryland
* Charleston, South Carolina
* Boston, Masachusetts
Hey those are the guys who voted in the major SOPA supporters. Representatives are supposed to represent the will of the people ... well in theory anyway.
Really sad that the opposition couldn't even take Los Angeles.
Re:Stand up, people! (Score:5, Informative)
And the top counties :
* Los Angeles, California (ie. Silicon Valley) (TWICE)
Hey those are the guys who voted in the major SOPA supporters. Representatives are supposed to represent the will of the people ... well in theory anyway.
Really sad that the opposition couldn't even take Los Angeles.
errr. Silicon valley is not in Los Angeles, Hollywood is. Hollywood's support for this bill makes sense, silicon valley's does not.
Re:Money. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Weird money (Score:4, Informative)
Wrong. Ron Paul is obviously not corrupt, and he's been a Representative for decades. He's not going to get bought off either; the guy is old. Yes, most politicians do get corrupt these days, but it's not an absolute rule.
Of course RP also has a lot of very controversial and extreme ideas. If you want someone that's really middle-of-the-road but incorruptible, you're probably out of luck.
Re:Stand up, people! (Score:4, Informative)
Nice site you got there at http://www.rense.com/ [rense.com]. David Duke videos? Check. Conspiracy theories about Mars? Check. Chemtrails? Check. Miracle cures? Check. Rampant antisemitism? Check.
Though for what it's worth, the original source seems to be here: http://www.secularhumanism.org/index.php?section=library&page=index_23 [secularhumanism.org]
And the author, Laurence Britt*, seems to have no other credentials than his article appearing in a free, irregularly published journal of, let's say uncertain repute. (Don't forget to pick up his novel, June, 2004, [amazon.com], which depicts a future America dominated by right-wing extremists, still available new from 5 sellers for just $49.99.)
Of course none of that makes what he says any less true by default. Fascist nations probably possess most of those characteristics. It's also true that serial killers all have many characteristics in common: they have noses, mouths, ears, eyes, hair, and always seem to show up in human form (so far). Be on the lookout!
Re:Weird money (Score:4, Informative)
>The Greeks also considered "demokratos" to be equivalent to anarchy.
That's a very ignorant statement. Mostly because there really wasn't such a society as "The greeks". The various greek cities were effectively independent city-states (known as Polis, plural Pollii) with very different cultures and political systems. Some were absolute monarchies, some were democracies (several variations on the theme though none had universal suffrage). About the only thing they had in common was language and religion - their political systems were as different as England and America - in fact, much more so in many cases. Oh and they regularly went to war on each other. Do not imagine for one second that the politics of Sparta and the politics of Athens had anything in common.
The monarchic Greeks indeed considered the democratic cities to be anarchies (and Plato wrote that monarchy is the ideal form of government while democracy is doomed to fall into chaos- but since he lived under one we must consider the possibility that he just wrote what the king would like to hear in a classic case of CYA - especially since his own mentor Socrates had gotten the death penalty for saying things that weren't popular).
So your statement is rather meaningless - much more interesting is how the people living in the democracies described their cities and how they ran them. Tellingly the democracies came with a set of basic behaviours deemed appropriate for a citizen in such a Polis - about how to respectfully getting along with your fellow citizens. The proper behavior for living in the Polis is "to be polite" - which is where the word came from. Those whose daily lives revolved around maintaining law and order in the democracies were the "men of the Polis" - from which we get the origins of modern "policemen" and those elected to govern a polis were Politicians.
Your history lesson is now concluded and you are slightly less ignorant.