
List of every member of congress who supports SOPA, sortable by donations - sgaither
http://www.sopaopera.org
======
fecklessyouth
Biggest surprise among supporters: Al "Net Neutrality is the 1st Amendment
issue of our time" Franken.

Among opponents: Bachmann.

~~~
jsundquist
Sadly the support for it is directly connected to where they get their money
from (For democrats and republicans).

Here is Bachmann's top sources of donations:

[http://www.opensecrets.org/politicians/summary.php?cid=N0002...](http://www.opensecrets.org/politicians/summary.php?cid=N00027493&cycle=2012)

Notice no Movie/Music Industry in the top 5

Then here is Franken's:

[http://www.opensecrets.org/politicians/summary.php?cid=N0002...](http://www.opensecrets.org/politicians/summary.php?cid=N00029016&cycle=2012)

Time Warner is his number one supporter. I would imagine that they are _for_
it.

~~~
GHFigs
_Time Warner is his number one supporter_

OpenSecrets:"The organizations themselves did not donate, rather the money
came from the organizations' PACs, their individual members or employees or
owners, and those individuals' immediate families."

The first clause is in red and bold.

(Edit:I apologize to the reader(s) who felt that directly quoting the links
cited by the parent comment was objectionable.)

~~~
burgerbrain
What is your point?

------
wyclif
Note that Rep. Ron Paul is the _only_ current Presidential candidate that
opposes SOPA.

~~~
josh33
Yes, but many are not members of congress currently - Romney and Gingrich
being 2 specifically.

~~~
wyclif
Opposing SOPA with a vote in Congress isn't the only way for real leaders to
register dissent. There's no excuse for Romney or any other candidate to avoid
informing the American public that as President, they would veto any future
SOPA-like legislation restricting Internet freedom.

~~~
zizee
The media companies are all supporting SOPA, so anyone who opposes SOPA is
probably worried about the repercussions of going public.

I can understand why they might be staying quiet, but I think it is weak and
cowardly.

------
gammarator
Both California Senators (Boxer and Feinstein) are supporters (and co-
sponsors!) of Protect-IP. Silicon Valley needs to make its voice heard, and
soon.

~~~
gfaremil
And they both live in San Francisco - which shows that it is all about $$ and
not about their political views or principles.

So this is one of the problems I can see with politics today: politicians have
no views or principles you can count on. Everything is depended on how much
money they get (of course they all stick and talk about wedge issues such as
guns, gays, and god which are really stupid).

That is one of main reason people like Ron Paul: you know what you get.

~~~
botker
It's interesting to me in part because I tend to think of the SOPA battle as
being rooted in the age-old war between North and South -- Silicon Valley vs.
Hollywood. Attempting to cripple our industry is just a standard war practice.
But to consider that the Senators are both SF residents makes me doubt the
premise.

------
steplow
No surprise about any of the Dems really: Piracy, copyright, and related
issues have been issues for them for a long time, primarily due to their
connections with the entertainment industry. It's too bad that they don't
understand that hurting the consumer is going to kill the industries that fund
them.

------
CWIZO
I was surprised there are more democrats for SOPA than there are republicans.

~~~
sgaither
Much of Hollywood/traditional media leans left. Most of the Dems against it
are in the Silicon Valley.

~~~
thetrendycyborg
California's Dems are co-sponsors.

------
rhettg
Can someone use this data to figure out how much it would cost to make SOPA go
away and then setup a kick starter project?

------
cjoh
To me, this is proof positive that campaign contributions are correlative but
not causal.

------
nextparadigms
Google, Facebook and whoever else is going on a blackout before the vote,
please link to the politicians who support SOPA, too.

The people deserve to know it, and they need to be put against the wall for
it, not only so they can't be re-elected again because of this, but also so
others don't try to support it, too, fearing the backlash.

------
sfaruque
It's sad to see that for almost ever 1 SOPA opposing member on the list, there
are about 4 supporting members.

~~~
jmonegro
Yeah. After seeing this, I'm pretty sure SOPA will pass...

~~~
incomethax
IMO the only way to prevent SOPA passing would be Google/Facebook/Wikipedia
going the "nuclear option" and putting up a click through page - short of that
I doubt something this widely supported would get stopped.

------
fauldsh
Wish there was a way to view who funded them more, basically ($TV|Movie) -
($Online|Internet)

~~~
padraigk
I wish the table of underlying data was available so that a logistic
regression could be run to see whether variables like campaign contributions
do indeed predict support for SOPA after age and number of years served have
been partialled out.

~~~
tst
The data is pretty easily accessible as JSON - however, here's the data I
used: <http://pastebin.com/nRYv40U8>

Firstly, a boxplot with the quotient of entertainment contributions to
entertainment & internet contributions.

<http://i.imgur.com/FWQWy.png>

You can see quite easily that there's a difference which is also significant
(95%, t = -4.73).

I've also done a logistic regression correcting with age, party (is_democrat),
seniority and quota of contributions (quota_ent).

    
    
      ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
           support |      Coef.   Std. Err.      z    P>|z|     [95% Conf. Interval]  
      -------------+----------------------------------------------------------------
               age |   .0258551   .0358136     0.72   0.470    -.0443382    .0960485
       is_democrat |  -1.252883   .6243361    -2.01   0.045    -2.476559   -.0292067
         seniority |  -.0262688   .0381962    -0.69   0.492     -.101132    .0485943
         quota_ent |   5.839435   1.447732     4.03   0.000     3.001933    8.676938
             _cons |  -1.968467    2.01512    -0.98   0.329    -5.918029    1.981096
      ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
    

The AUC is 0.8089 which is quite okay. Furthermore, it would be interesting to
test whether location is a significant factor.

Edit: @adamtaylor: Here's a scatter plot with each contribution, transformed
with log(1 + x) for readability: <http://i.imgur.com/MRciL.png>

~~~
_delirium
Hmm, that scatterplot suggests a less straightforward relationship; the
for/against dots look like they plausibly came from _slightly_ different
distributions, but not very much different ones.

------
jsundquist
Very depressing. Almost without any exception (I admit there are a couple)
every single for or against can be determined by how much money they get from
the computer industry(Against) or from the Music / Movie industry (For).

All of this happens across party lines...

~~~
GHFigs
I'm having trouble reconciling this assertion with the fact that I can open
the submission, sort by "online/internet" and it seems that those in the
supporters column receive substantially larger amounts of money from
"online/internet" than do those opposed.

~~~
adamtaylor
I agree. TV/Movie money seems like a pretty good predictor of vote, but
online/internet money much less so. But I'd still like to see an x-y plot with
each congressperson a point, and TV/Movie money on one axis, online/internet
money on the other, with each point colored by their vote. Then you could
really see how separable the two populations are.

------
fauigerzigerk
Donations of any sort to people running for office should be banned outright
without exceptions. It should be worth something to tax payers that
politicians cannot be bought.

~~~
brazzy
Result: instead of donating to their preferred candidate's campaign, donors
will now run their own campaign promoting that candidate. Try banning _that_
without running into the First Amendement...

~~~
fauigerzigerk
I think banning direct donations would at least make it more difficult for
those politicians that are motivated by financial gain. Money can buy all
kinds of things, not just campaign ads.

Also, running an effective campaign for someone else without central
coordination of the message is a lot more difficult than what's going on now.
Such campaigns can easily backfire.

That's why I think the extent of political corruption could be reduced by
banning donations.

~~~
snowwrestler
Only a truly stupid person would run for political office in search of
financial gain. The level of work is extremely high (hours like a startup) but
the amounts of money are small. For instance the average House campaign is
just a bit over $1 million, and that funds dozens of people working very long
hours for almost a year. Compare to capital funding or revenue levels in
business. People willing to work that hard could make a lot more money in
almost any industry.

As hokey as it sounds, people get involved in politics because they want to
change the world. It is the natural end result of activism like we are seeing
around SOPA. It's possible that at some point, someone fighting SOPA will
decide to work for a candidate or run for office themselves. At that point
they'll need to start raising funds. Will that corrupt them automatically? I
don't think so.

~~~
fauigerzigerk
I believe they want to feel the power, they believe they're "serving" the
public, making a financial sacrifice exactly because they could earn a lot
more outside of politics. I think this combination could lead some of them to
believe that they deserve to earn more money for their hard work.

Also, it's not unheard of that some politicians are opportunists without very
strong convictions one way or the other. At least that's what I sometimes feel
when I hear them talk about stuff in a way that betrays utter incompetence.

------
sankalpk
This is good advice if you choose to contact someone in congress about this
issue.

[http://www.quora.com/How-do-I-have-a-conversation-with-my-
Se...](http://www.quora.com/How-do-I-have-a-conversation-with-my-Senator-
about-dropping-support-for-SOPA)

------
ctingom
I contacted my senators.

------
jadoint
Is there a site that lists all of the candidates running against pro-SOPA/PIPA
representatives? Better yet, a site that allows me to give money to their
opponents for the next election cycle (provided they're not pro-SOPA either)?

------
veyron
I would like to see the congresspeople who haven't openly supported or opposed
SOPA. Those people represent opportunities for education.

~~~
sgaither
<http://sopaopera.org/sopa/#roll_call>

<http://sopaopera.org/protect-ip/#roll_call>

------
mahyarm
What I don't understand is why these donation amounts are so low. Do these
reps really only get around $25k an industry on average? Do they use these
donations personally like it's extra pay or for campaign expenses? Is there a
lot more money that we don't see?

~~~
Jach
Something we don't necessarily see is what sort of after-retirement deals they
have lined up that may be in the millions. I'm sure there are other sources as
well. But in general, politicians are pretty cheap.

~~~
beernutz
Exactly!

Like Chris Dodd becoming CEO of the MPAA who is reportedly being paid $1.5
million a year as his base salary.

------
rhizome
I'd like to see this combined with the SOPA UPC scanner to further cross
reference the manufacturer's (and their parents, affiliates, subsidiaries,
employees, and...) political donations.

------
RyanMcGreal
You know the world has gone mad when Al Franken supports SOPA and Michelle
Bachman opposes it.

~~~
thetrendycyborg
Other possibility: your understanding of the world was flawed and needs to be
adjusted. You were mad.

------
DustinCalim
Alternate title: List of congressmen who have some idea of how the internet
works

------
bcrawl
Reddit site has started implementing their protest. It is redirecting.

------
callmeed
How the hell are both of California's senators FOR this bill?

~~~
toyg
Los Angeles, CA. Kinda big in the media sector.

------
martco
republicans are more stridently in support of this measure

------
gitarr
This might be a stupid question, but as a European not all too familiar with
US political laws I have to ask:

How is it not corruption when senators and congressmens votes can be bought by
companies or whole industries?

~~~
noahc
In order to understand this you have to understand that in American
corporations are persons. When Mitt Romney said, "Corporations are people too"
at the Iowa State Fair he wasn't sharing his own personal beliefs. Instead he
was telling the truth. See Corporate Personhood[1] for more.

From this it follows that Corporations have the right to free speech. This is
where the supreme court ruled[2] that it is unconstitutional to deny
corporations the right to political speech.

The legal requirements are disclosures and that's why you hear "paid for by
Americans for a better tomorrow" or something like that. Corporations don't
directly give to campaign coffers, but through a series of transactions often
via PACs (political action committees) it eventually gets to where it's going.
It is illegal for PAC's to coordinate with the campaign, but this does happen
in subtle and less than subtle ways.

[1]<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_personhood>
[2][http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_United_v._Federal_Elec...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_United_v._Federal_Election_Commission)

~~~
asdfasdghasdf
While this has been true for the past year, the linked page gets its data from
OpenSecrets which tracks only hard money donations to campaigns. It's tracking
almost entirely donations from people who work in the given industries, so I
think it's misleading to bring up corporate personhood here.

~~~
noahc
It's not hard to imagine that hard money can be used as a proxy for soft money
to some multiple. For example soft money is 78x what the hard money is.

Hard money donations are often given by corporations through PACs as well. The
reason this is allowed? Corporations have personhood. Your other post is
correct and I'm not down voting you, but if you really want to understand
corporate money in politics you need to understand corporate personhood.

If anything the numbers are misleading, because all it really tells you how
much people who identify their employer are really giving. That's just
demographic data, not proof of a particular policy.

