I don't know which side of the fence I stand on in regards to the "intent" of congress. Perhaps they have good intentions trying to protect American businesses from overseas piracy (the virtual, technical piracy; not the Captain Jack variety).
But, anyway, I decided I'd do my geek duty and write my representative and my senators a nice little note.
I basically wanted to explain to them that regardless of their intentions, before they start writing bills that are going to impact the Internet they need to become a little bit more technologically savvy. I challenged them to implement a way to do Internet Voting and then come back and think about the intelligence of this law.
It would be like me trying to get my old 1990 car to pass inspection by covering up the exhaust manifold on my engine. My car would be running really clean as far as the inspectors were concerned, but it wouldn't be long before the motor gave out.
But, anyway, letter in virtual hand, and ready to send it to all my civil servants, I was met with web site errors redirecting me to a generic Congress page. Our government officials can't even keep their own websites up and we're letting them vote on Internet laws that will impact all of us. Really?
I think wiki is stupid to do this. So you blank yourself out...so what? How does that affect the fight againest SOPA in anyway shape or form? It has no affect at all.
ReplyDeleteIt's not really about the affect, but more about the education. If a million Americans had no idea that the government was going to pass such a law, now 900,000 of them do.
ReplyDeleteIt's the attention.
The good news is that it doesn't matter that our elected officials are technical idiots (or should that be "technically idiots") since all the remedies in SOPA were written by the MPAA/RIAA.
ReplyDeleteThe bad news is, of course, that all the remedies in SOPA were written by the MPAA/RIAA.
I've never liked the MPAA/RIAA either. Mix them with the government and it's like rancid peanut butter and moldy chocolate. Two bad tastes that taste worse together.
ReplyDelete