

An Open Letter From Internet Engineers to the Senate Judiciary Committee - auxbuss
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/09/open-letter

======
guns
Hey HN, please send an email to your senator regarding COICA:

[https://secure.eff.org/site/Advocacy?cmd=display&page=Us...](https://secure.eff.org/site/Advocacy?cmd=display&page=UserAction&id=455)

Our government is looking to put its foot in the door while the Internet is
young. If we sleep on these things, worse infringements will surely follow:

    
    
        ¶ Communications services that encrypt messages 
          must have a way to unscramble them.
    
        ¶ Foreign-based providers that do business inside the 
          United States must install a domestic office capable
          of performing intercepts.
    
        ¶ Developers of software that enables peer-to-peer 
          communication must redesign their service to allow 
          interception.
    

<http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/27/us/27wiretap.html?_r=3>

~~~
BrandonM
I used the first link there to send an email. My Senator (or at least someone
in his office) actually sent a non-form reply, so I replied with my own
followup (the rest of this comment):

Thank you for the quick reply. I wanted to comment on one issue.

On Wed, Sep 29, 2010 at 5:59 PM, Sherrod Brown <do_not_reply@brown.senate.gov>
wrote:

> Dear Mr. Mintern:

> Illegal file sharing and unauthorized copying of digital material prevents
> musicians, producers, filmmakers, software designers, and many others from
> reaping the fruits of their labor. Such activity has the potential to stifle
> artistic creativity and compromise electronic innovation. Ultimately,
> intellectual property theft costs our economy billions of dollars and can
> result in hundreds of thousands of lost jobs.

I acknowledge that this is a problem (more later), but law enforcement is not
even doing all it can now to stop illegal file sharing. This overbroad
legislature provides new tools, but at the expense of everyone's privacy. It
does not make sense to encumber the US Internet for _everyone_ because of the
actions of a relatively small percentage of infringers. Moreover, infringers
will find a way around these measures; they always do. This is an unwinnable
arms race where the main losers are those of us who are going about our daily
lives without infringing at all.

Furthermore, I have not seen unbiased research showing that online piracy
_actually_ hurts content producers. There are many valid arguments that
infringement is often somewhat legitimate:

    
    
      1. To try a product out before buying it
      2. Because of poor DRM (digital rights management), some
         legitimate buyers have trouble using the product and
         are forced to use the pirated version anyways
         (something as minor as having the wrong display
         connector can prevent someone from watching a DVD)
      3. To replace a lost or stolen product
      4. To extract a portion to be used under Fair Use (e.g.,
         providing commentary)
    

Many argue further that those who actually are pirating would not have bought
the product anyway (presumably they don't have the means at the time of
pirating), and that by pirating they actually increase future sales through
referring friends and buying similar content in the future. In other words,
even if this legislature is effective at limiting piracy, it's not clear how
big the benefit is.

One further point: even if we assume that eliminating piracy hurts the
entertainment industry, we should look at who it's actually hurting. Content
_producers_ (those who are actually making the content, as opposed to the
record companies who treat content producers as sharecroppers) may not
actually be hurt much at all. Musicians, for example, are more likely to have
larger concert attendance the more people that have heard their music, whereas
they only receive a few cents on the dollar for album sales.

In the end, my conclusion is that if there are any benefits buried in this
legislature, they are mainly in propping up the current (arguably unfair)
model in which music is produced. It is time for record companies to evolve
with the times and find new business models, and to start treating their
artists better. Pirates do far less harm to the average band than modern
record companies do with their unfair deals. For more information, see
Courtney Love's Letter to Recording Artists:
<http://www.gerryhemingway.com/piracy2.html>

Now let's focus on issues that actually benefit the American people instead of
wasting our time kowtowing to the record company lobbyists who are grasping at
anything they can to prop up their old-fashioned unfair business models. The
American people deserve better than that.

Thank you, Brandon Mintern

------
davidu
There will be more about this issue in the coming weeks. It's expected to pass
in the SJC on Thursday but will get more scrutiny in the Senate. This caught a
number of us by surprise but we are responding aggressively and quickly.

And yes, this bill would probably help my business, but I think it's still a
terrible precedent to set and I am not interested in having the government
induce ISPs or folks like me to block sites.

------
ekidd
If you'd like to have more influence over Congress, here are some suggestions:

1\. Writing paper letters is great, but they take a long time to arrive, and
many of them spend time in decontamination, etc., because of the various
anthrax scares. Phone calls seem to work reasonably well, and they get there
immediately.

2\. Get a smart phone app for calling your Senators and Representatives, and
for tracking legislation. On Android, I'm extremely fond of "Congress" from
Sunlight Labs (which is apparently available as "Real-Time Congress" on the
iPhone). Using this, you can make phone calls, track legislation, find related
news stories, and so on. The current bill, for example, is apparently "S.
3804".

3\. Before talking to your Senators' or Representatives' offices, write down
some notes about what you want to say. Make sure you include the bill number,
your background/job title (if it's relevant), where you live, and what you
think they should do: vote for it, vote against it, etc.

4\. Be polite.

I'm told that if you're _really_ serious, the next steps are figuring out how
to reach the specific staffers who handle the issues you care about, and to
start building networks in your home state. Organize 20 or 30 like-minded
hackers, and you, too, can flood your Congresspeople with intelligent calls,
ask to meet with them when they're in town, and so on.

Any other suggestions?

------
chopsueyar
If only they were lobbyists.

~~~
jacobolus
This _is_ lobbying.

~~~
chopsueyar
Writing a letter?

~~~
jacobolus
Yes. Obviously these aren’t professional lobbyists (that’s the word for
someone who is paid explicitly to write such letters). But they _are_
lobbying. You can do it too, whenever you want. That’s (a big) part of the
point of a representative system of government (one of the fundamental rights
guaranteed by the first amendment, in the case of the US).
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_petition>

~~~
chopsueyar
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lobbying_Disclosure_Act_of_1995>

_"The term "lobbyist" means any individual who is employed or retained by a
client for financial or other compensation for services that include more than
one lobbying contact, other than an individual whose lobbying activities
constitute less than 20 percent of the time engaged in the services provided
by such individual to that client over a six month period."_

87 guys signed one letter and sent it to a committee (not all 100 senators).

I know these 87 guys are awesome, but that is not how Senators are influenced.
Now, if they took the Senators to lunch or dinner, flew them to exotic locales
to play golf, and gave the senator's relatives cushy jobs in various tech
companies, well, I would be more optimistic about the outcome and I would
consider these 87 people lobbyists.

------
tlots
Didn't see Al Gore?

