Subject: SOPA meeting summary and action plan for this week *ACTION NEEDED THIS WEEK: JOIN THE FIGHT AGAINST THE STOP ONLINE PIRACY ACT (SEE BELOW) -- PLEASE FORWARD THIS EMAIL, POST TO LISTS, BLOGS, ETC.* * * *Please email David Segal at [email protected] if you want to receive direct updates as action pages and tools go live
This Saturday, more than 70 representatives from leading tech companies and advocacy groups from across the political spectrum participated in a meeting to coordinate action against the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA). The meeting, which included leaders from Tumblr, Foursquare, Etsy, Kickstarter and Reddit was remarkable for the array of participating organizations and its focus on how to mobilize to inspire millions of Americans to take action to tell Congress that this bill is deeply flawed. Representative Zoe Lofgren opened the meeting with an overview of the current state of the legislation, emphasizing the need for Americans to call their Representatives EARLY THIS WEEK to voice their strong discontent with the bill: It is slated for a vote in the House Judiciary Committee on THURSDAY. Please read the below to find out how you can get involved. If we're going to beat SOPA -- and future bills like it -- we must expand the network of involvement fast. For more information on the bill, please read this piece by Rebecca MacKinnon<http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/16/opinion/firewall-law-could-infringe-on-free-speech.html?_r=1> which recently ran in the New York Times. *Action Plan: 11/15 House Judiciary SOPA Markup* * * *The most important thing to know: * *We have the best chance of making a difference on this bill if we can push hundreds of thousands of calls into the House of Representatives Monday through Thursday. This is because it's crucial our voices are heard BEFORE the bill enters the mark-up (voting) stage in the House Judiciary committee. * * * *Here's what you can do: * 1. Use whatever means necessary to drive users to our central portal -- FightForTheFuture.org -- where people will be prompted to call their House Representative and given the tools to know what to say and how to say it 2. Spread our censorship tools -- please visit AmericanCensorship.org to find a tool that lets anyone redact portions of a tweet, Facebook post, blog post, etc. The redaction will be a link back to the AmericanCensorship.org page to drive calls. 3. Drive people to IWorkforTheInternet.org to post pictures of themselves to tell the world that the Internet is an engine of jobs growth in this country 4. Develop your own tools to drive calls to the U.S. House of Representatives (calls to the Senate are not a priority this week) -- please let us know if you need any assistance with scripts or other materials to support these tools. 5. Forward this email to anybody and everybody who is in a position to help (sites that might participate, activist orgs, reporters and bloggers, etc) * * *FACT SHEET ABOUT THE LEGISLATION (SOPA)* *SOPA's provisions would directly*: 1) Undermine the DMCA safe harbor by forcing sites to start policing user-generated content BEFORE it gets uploaded, or risk being shut down for facilitating infringement. 2) Give the government new powers to block Americans' access to domains that are accused of facilitating copyright infringement. 3) Ban others from linking back to said sites, and ban search engines from listing them in the indexes. 4) Make it a felony for people to upload unlicensed content, punishable by 5 years in prison. (Think background music, cover bands, karaoke vids, etc.) *The consequences we predict are that SOPA will*: 1) Kill existing and prospective jobs; 2) Stifle innovation; 3) Undermine web security -- more on that in this letter from Sandia National Lab<http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20111118/03163416812/sandia-national-labs-dns-filtering-sopapipa-wont-stop-piracy-will-hurt-online-security.shtml> ; 4) Allow our government to engage in new forms of censorship; 5) Give comfort (and know-how) to regimes abroad that are seeking to use censorship to stymie democracy and political unrest. I'm going to be serving as a press contact and can be reached at [email protected] and (401) 499-5991. Also feel free to get in touch with general questions about the week ahead. Thanks so much for taking on this fight -- we can absolutely still win if we keep working together and mobilize our membership and user bases like never before. It'll go down in history, and leave a lasting infrastructure that we can use to fight back against future attacks on the web. If you want some quick inspiration and a sense of how far we've come, check out this great Slate piece<http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technocracy/2011/11/stop_online_piracy_act_can_the_geek_lobby_stop_hollywood_from_wrecking_the_internet_.html> on the rise of the "Geek Lobby". David Segal Demand Progress -- Ali Sternburg [email protected] Harvard College, Class of 2009 American University Washington College of Law, J.D. Candidate Class of 2012 http://www.alisternburg.com
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