It’s not the game-changer for this campaign. But it could shave off a lot of votes for a lot of candidates.
It’s the Stop Online Piracy Act. Posited as a means of protecting copyrights and against counterfeit drugs, the act – sponsored by Lamar Smith, with a slew of co-hosts – is rife with opportunity for abuse; it would make it frighteningly easy for government to censor online content on any dubious grounds it sees fit to find; it’ll make the user-content industry (think Youtube, Flickr and, potentially, any blog) exceptionally hazardous – not for abusers of copyrights, but for the service providers themselves. It’s possible, according to the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Center for Democracy and Technology, for as little as a single complaint to shut down, say, Hot Air (and we all know what side is full of complainers who just loooooooooove to use the bureaucracy to stifle debate).
And the issue is gaining traction among those who pay attention to these things:
To the ranks of same-sex marriage, tax cuts and illegal immigration, add this to the list of polarizing political issues of Election 2012: the Stop Online Piracy Act.
The hot-button anti-piracy legislation that sparked a revolt online is starting to become a political liability for some of SOPA’s major backers. Fueled by Web activists and online fundraising tools, challengers are using the bill to tag its congressional supporters as backers of Big Government — and raise campaign cash while they’re at it.
Al Franken and – as luck would have it, the up-for-election Amy Klobuchar – both support SOPA. Elements of the left have been beating on them, especially on A-Klo; both are, of course, in the bag for Hollywood.
It’s time to join in the bashing!
The outside of the package says “Stop Online Piracy.” Very clever. Once upon a time, wrote Homer, the Greek army besieging the city of Troy built a great wooden horse and left it outside the city walls. The curious Trojans rolled the horse inside the city, only to be surprised and overwhelmed by the Greek soldiers hiding inside the horse. End of story.
The backers claim this legislation would NEVER be used for those purposes, it’s all scare tactics used by thieves and haters.
Sen. Hubert Humphrey, making a similar claim about the 1964 Civil Rights Act, famously claimed he would eat his hat if the law was ever used to require racial quotas in hiring or admissions. We know how that turned out. Do we really need another lesson?
Mr. Obama would like you to know that he’s not going to let your sentimental attachment to the 1st amendment stand in the way of his doing the job he was sent to Washington to do.
It would be really nice to repeal some of the more recent copyright extensions (1909 is still recent, right?) in addition to dumping SOPA in the garbage can. IMHO. 🙂