For information on tracking, you can find SOPA on this page, and PIPA on this one.
SOPA is currently in committee, which means it could still be tabled and killed for good, or could pass. PIPA has just passed committee, and is up for vote in the Senate on January 24.
Help kill these bills. Email your senators, look up their contact information on senate.gov.
Take another step, and email your representatives,look up their contact information on writerep.house.gov.
The emails I've sent have gone something like this:
I'm writing to you about SOPA and PIPA.
As a student, I'm an avid consumer and user of the Internet, and I oppose the Stop Online Piracy Act and Protect Intellectual Property Act in their current forms. I know it's important to protect copyrighted material online, but these bills are flawed.
Congress should focus not just on the goal of protecting copyright owners, but also on protecting the speech rights of consumers, like me, who are reading and producing wholly non-infringing content.
Please set aside these bills in their entirety or reformulate them to protect my rights.
Thank you for your time.
By the way, if you're in Connecticut, like me, both of your senators are currently sponsoring PIPA. Go do something to change that.
Call your Representative, too. At the moment, Chris Murphy has no stance on SOPA.
ReplyDeleteCall their offices - it's the best way to get your voice across in the little time we have left (the Senate has a cloture vote on PIPA next Tuesday 1/24). If you call, this is a good resource: http://www.opencongress.org/wiki/Project:Stop_SOPA_and_PIPA/Contact_tips#Contacting_by_phone
Contact Info:
Rep. Chris Murphy (CT-5): (202) 225-4476
https://forms.house.gov/chrismurphy/webforms/issue_subscribe.htm
Sen. Joe Lieberman: (202) 224-4041
http://lieberman.senate.gov/index.cfm/contact/email-me-about-an-issue
Sen. Richard Blumenthal: (202) 224-2823
http://blumenthal.senate.gov/contact
Make your voice heard, the internet is too valuable to lose.
...Reagan's blog's resident geek
(continued from above)
ReplyDelete...and actually, PIPA is not actually up for a vote on the 24th. It's actually a cloture vote, because Sen. Ron Wyden (from Oregon) was filibustering PIPA and Harry Reid moved to limit his time to 30 hours of debate. Therefore, the Senate won't actually vote on PIPA (in the context of passing the chamber) until 2:15 next Tuesday + 30 hours of debate. So that's not until sometime on Thursday. But, if they can get cloture on debate (which needs 60 votes), then the bill will almost definitely pass the chamber (which would only require 50 votes).
For more information: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloture#Procedure