Thanks to everyone in this community who has reached out to their elected officials on the SOPA/PIPA issue. It is hard to tell whether we are making a difference or not. But at least there are signs that Congress is recognizing that this issue is not as simple as the MPAA and RIAA have been making it out to be.
Yesterday Congressman Darrell Issa, who along with Zoe Lofgren, has been leading the opposition to SOPA in the House, tweeted out:
#SOPA UPDATE: markup scheduled for tomorrow AM has been POSTPONED "due to House schedule" #stopSOPA #OPEN #dontbreaktheinternet
— Darrell Issa (@DarrellIssa) December 20, 2011
This is an indication that Rep Lamar Smith, who is the lead sponsor of SOPA is having a bit more difficulty ramming this bill through the Judiciary Committee than he thought. Maybe the letter from leading Internet inventors and engineers that came out last week caused everyone to hit the pause button (it should). Maybe your calls and letters are starting to have an effect (they should). Or maybe they just wanted to go home for the holidays.
But when the House and Senate come back in January, the SOPA and PIPA bills will be back on the agenda. We need to keep up the fight, we need to explain that this is very bad legislation, and we need to help Congress understand the Internet a little bit better so they don't fall prey to silly ideas like the ones in these bills. I'm committed to all of this. I hope you all are too.
I'll end with a link to a post written by Prof Laurence Tribe, who teaches Constitutional Law at Harvard Law School, in which he asserts that SOPA violates our constitutional right to free speech.
