Second letter in protest of SOPA and PIPA

In support of the day's protests against SOPA and PIPA, I've sent an updated version of my November letter to my representatives. I strongly urge you to contact your Congressional representatives as well—feel free to use any part or all of my letter below as needed.

Dear [CongressCritter]:

I am writing as a concerned voter in your district to once again ask you to strongly oppose the Stop Online Privacy Act (H.R.3261) and to urge your counterparts in the Senate to oppose the PROTECT IP Act (S.968).

While the Internet continues to raise legitimate questions about intellectual property rights and their enforcement, these pieces of proposed legislation are gross, heavy-handed overreactions to such concerns. In their current form, these bills would provide no meaningful protection for intellectual property rights but still threaten critical features of the Internet. Quoting from a November 18, 2011 article in "The Atlantic":

"[U]nder scrutiny, it's obvious that even a conservative accounting of [the] costs far outweigh even an optimistic assessment of [the] benefits. To sum them up, the certain costs include disrupting the business models of countless technology companies that are not in the business of piracy; handing the federal government substantial and unprecedented powers over the Internet; entrenching a guilty-until-proven-innocent attitude toward copyright infringement; making the Internet less secure for everyone; arguably infringing on the First Amendment; contravening internationally recognized Internet standards; and undermining international press freedoms and human rights."

When the bill was first announced, members of the Business Software Alliance as well as members of the Senate expressed grave concerns that such legislation would seriously harm technical innovation, stifle investment in the new ideas and businesses, and harm technology jobs crucial to future economic growth. Key computer scientists also expressed concerns that these bills would damage core components of the Internet's infrastructure and compromise cyber-security.

On January 18th, some of the web's most popular sites like Wikipedia and Reddit joined thousands of others in protesting these bills by "going dark", replacing normal content with pages asking their users to contact their Congressional representatives to stop these bills. Others like Google, Facebook, and Twitter chose not go dark, but nonetheless, continued to express their strong opposition to this legislation.

Groups across the political spectrum—including the ACLU and Electronic Frontier Foundation on the left and the Heritage Foundation and Americans for Tax Reform on the right—have also expressed their concerns about the detrimental effects these laws would have in a variety of areas.

Most importantly, as The Atlantic article notes, these bills threaten our Constitutional rights to due process and free speech. As written, they would allow sites to be blocked without affording those accused of copyright infringement their rights to answer such charges in a court of law; this sort of "guilty until proven innocent" approach to copyright law would have chilling effects. For example, under such laws, the science outreach and advocacy groups of which I am a member could find their web and social media sites taken offline due to accusations of copyright infringement while leaving them with no meaningful legal recourse to challenge such actions—even if their use of copyrighted material is protected by fair-use provisions.

Over the past few months, numerous organizations and ordinary citizens such as myself have expressed our concerns about the myriad ways that these bills will stifle innovation and our constitutional rights. In the coming days, many more will continue to do so. I hope you will take my concerns to heart and join your colleagues (among them, Representatives Issa, Paul, and Pelosi and Senators Cantwell, Moran, Paul, and Wyden) in opposing such legislation.

Sincerely,
[Name here]