Stop The Bill, Being Pushed In Congress THAT WOULD DESTROY CURRENT

Just heard back about this from my Congressmen. As Mitch McConnell is one of my senators, I saw no point in writing him.

In part, this was the response:

Thank you for contacting me to express your concerns about H.R. 3261, the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA). I appreciate hearing from you on this important matter.

As you know, SOPA would give the U.S. Department of Justice and intellectual property owners new tools to combat illegal music, movie, and product sales on the Internet. While I certainly support the goal of protecting intellectual property and preventing the trafficking of counterfeit goods, I share your concerns that H.R. 3261 is an overly-broad tool that may result in the removal of non-infringing content from the Internet, in contravention of the First Amendment.

H.R. 3261 is currently pending consideration in the House Judiciary Committee, which recently held a hearing on the legislation. However, a bipartisan group of legislators is working on an alternative approach to protecting intellectual property online. While I do not serve on a committee with jurisdiction over this issue, you may be assured that I will keep your views close in mind should SOPA or another bill on this matter come to the House Floor for a vote.

Kind of non-committal, but at least the point was made. If everyone did this, it would be a flood.

The single largest threat to the elite is a well-informed public. Institutions such as Fox News ensure that we are far from that, but slowly more and more people are learning the real truth. This is because of the explosion of information and communication on the Internet. I would not be as well-informed as I am if I wasn't able to communicate or do research on the Internet. The OWS movement would not have happened without the Internet.

The elite are going to crush the Internet as we currently know it before too many people wake up to reality. Eventually the Internet will be limited to being a tool to misinform, advertise, and collect money from consumers, and nothing more. From the elite's point of view, the people exist solely to slave to enhance the lives of the elite. It does not serve the elite for the people to be well-informed. The best slaves are the people who do not know they are slaves.

Piracy is wrong...but this legislation isn't about that its about censorship, more accurately squashing dissent. But there is a fundamental question that is not being discussed and that is: What the f__k is the government doing providing special services for the movie and music industries...it should be their responsibility to pursue and prosecute copyright abuses, and they have the means and the legal right to do that without this sinister piece of legislation...

One of the problems here is that many of the people who vote on these issues have no real idea what this Internet thing is all about...they don't get it and don't care to, they just know that somehow its evil and a threat to their 1% status...

C u r r e n t has already been seriously warped by corporate influence.... Sorry even I (somewhat begrudgingly) like Olbermann, but 10 million a year? come on... C u r r e n t doesn't care if this part of their enterprise gets an end put to it.

We are being offered a free service or forum, nothing is free, we are the product... And as sure as I'm sitting here, between the advertisements pushed on us, and more commercial media coming to steal original thought and humor, we're being sold daily.... Typing fucking commercials for whatever advertisement in the sidebar (at least it won't be Herman Cain anymore)....

(So I mean if c u r r e n t goes...... It's just not the reason to stop the SOPA)

I would stop it, but I'm not the recording industry who is funding this draconian legislation to begin with....

It's sad, it used to be that bands didn't exist with out extensive touring and high quality shows. The ability to acquire copies of music free has helped restore strong touring, and bands actually having to have talent... This bill would just increase the amount of commercial shit music forced on us....

I already signed a petition to stop it .... and i am an artist .

What I find humorous is that the government can act when a certain "constituent" is damaged, but shutting down ID thieft, the scam emails comming out of Africa, or mandatory implementation of E-Verify is much to complex to undertake.

Sampling anyone ?

well...its not like they are listening to those of us SCREAMING TO PUT THE SHOWS ONLINE!!!. They will reap what they sow.... Keith, I used to love is show, but now your worried about net neutrality??? So if it shuts you down, that's bad, when we say put the shows online you tell us, sorry we have to follow the same bs that will doom you????

The WWW is like a little ball of mercury on a flat table. Homogenous looking until you press it. It splits into ten pieces and the harder you corral it, the more it breaks up. Kinda like herding cats. The web is centralized, yet cloudlike. In these days of smartphones and broadcast internet, trying to crack down and suppressing the rights of a citizenship grown used to these rights is only going to cause the "Web" to circumvent the system and create a whole society of people who have taken a little step for freedom and it will blossom into real, grassroots revolution.

Very impressive! Thnx to the free internet we have seen all the violence that has been visited on the OWS movement -- is it possible we are seeing this push at this moment because so many in our government (president/congress/senate), along with the oligarchs that own them don't want the status quo changed and they figure shutting down the internet will make it harder for we 99% to stick together?

Pwr 2 the 99%! Dismember the 1% and their political WHORES -- including bush-dark!

Excellent post, thinkingblue! I saw this on COUNTDOWN the night it aired. I thank Keith for talking about this. I watch COUNTDOWN every night, so I don't miss important stuff like this. We must keep the internet free and open. This is just another way for Big Brother to shut down dissent and stifle we the people. Sadly, I wasn't able to copy the link at the end of the video to contact my senator.
Speaking of Current TV--a strange thing happened Friday night. My husband and I were settling in to watch COUNTDOWN. The channel is 226 here and it comes on at 7:00pm central time. Well, we turn on the TV and no Current! We called our cable provider. (Time-Warner has a monopoly on WI, unfortunately) Well, we called TW and the lady on the phone said they had to reboot our box. Why? It worked well the night before. Anyway, Current and COUNTDOWN were back on our screen at about 7:20pm. The timing was interesting----Keith was talking about Scott Walker, our jerk governor. Luckily, we DVR'd the repeat of COUNTDOWN. Funny, that segment of the show was never posted on You Tube. Coincidence? I think not. The Koch brothers had their hand in that.