

Beyond Unlocking: Don’t Let Them Kill the First Reasonable Copyright Reform Bill - sinak
http://www.wired.com/opinion/2013/05/dont-let-them/

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SoftwareMaven
If you want it to pass, you need to call your Congress Critters and, more
importantly, get other people to call theirs. Most people don't understand the
issues at hand, so it is up to those of us who do understand it to educate
others.

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hkmurakami
Is calling my representative and saying to the staff "I'm a constituent and
would like to express my desire for Rep X to support this bill" or is there
something more concrete that we should say?

edit: I'm starting to think that for each of the bills we care about (whether
it be in support or in defiance), having a "blueprint" of what to say during
the call might help the "fringe callers" in calling their representatives
(especially if it is the first time doing so)

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SoftwareMaven
The important things to include are:

* Your name and location (so they know you are a constituent).

* The name of the bill and the bill number.

* Your stance and why you feel it is important.

It can't hurt to ask your Congress Critter if they have a stance on the bill,
then you can share that stance with others if it doesn't match yours.

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bsimpson
If this fails, will the digital community start taking the corruption of
lobbyists more seriously? If we could turn the anti-SOPA campaign into
something like rootstrikers.org's campaign to decouple large donations from
politics, we might be able to nullify the voices that make common-sense laws
so unlikely to pass.

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DannyBee
It doesn't require corruption of lobbyists for this to fail. What makes you
assume it was actually intended to go anywhere?

AFAIK, there is a huge influx of bills introduced right before most recesses
(or other related times), most offered with no intention of going anywhere,
and they don't even follow up on them.

They are done so the congressperson who introduced it can go back home and
tell folks "that's why I just introduced a bill in congress to do X".

It sounds impressive, but it's completely meaningless.

I'm not suggesting this is what is happening here, but i'm just pointing out
that corruption is not always related to "good" bills failing. It may be have
been introduced just to start a discussion, and make clear how much support
there is, to test the waters of the committees, or a million other non-
lobbyist reasons that would mean it will never go anywhere.

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GhotiFish
While you're contacting your local representatives, don't forget to mention
what happened to the people[1] and organizations[2] that dared to support
SOPA, because the inverse just might happen here.

[1]:[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_US_Congresspersons_who...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_US_Congresspersons_who_support_or_oppose_SOPA/PIPA)

[2]:[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_organizations_with_off...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_organizations_with_official_stances_on_the_SOPA_and_PIPA)

