I sent the following messages to my Congressional representatives today:

• To Bob Casey (D-PA), who currently supports PIPA

  I’m writing to say that as a constituent, I strongly oppose the PROTECT-IP Act (PIPA), S. 968. While I understand the need to protect intellectual property rights, PIPA would remove essential checks on the enforcement of such rights, and would place too much power in the hands of copyright owners. I urge Senator Casey to reconsider his support for this bill, and specifically to vote against the upcoming cloture motion.

  (unfortunately I forgot to adjust this to account for the fact that the cloture vote has been postponed)

• To Pat Toomey (R-PA), who currently opposes PIPA

  I’m writing to say that as a constituent, I strongly oppose the PROTECT-IP Act (PIPA), S. 968. I just wanted to express my thanks to Senator Toomey for understanding the dangers of this legislation and publicly opposing it.

• To Glenn Thompson (R-PA), who is undecided

  I’m writing to say that as a constituent, I strongly oppose the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), H.R. 3261. While I understand the need to protect intellectual property rights, SOPA would remove essential checks on the enforcement …

Yesterday, I made a post about the PROTECT-IP Act, explaining in some detail why it’s such a dangerous proposition. But if you’re like me, maybe you’re tired of hearing second-hand arguments. You’re not scared of a little legalese, and you want to check out the original source, Senate resolution 968 itself. Well, great! That’s what this blog is really (or at least tries to be) about, and that’s what I’m going to do in this post.

I have two goals here. For one thing, I’m trying to correct some of the misinformation that may be floating around on the web about PIPA. But I also want to make the point that laws aren’t as scary as you might think. When you take a good, close look at them, it’s not that hard to understand what is being said — sure, not well enough to argue them in court (unless you’re a lawyer), but you can get a pretty decent sense of what is and isn’t allowed.

This comes with two standard disclaimers:

1. I am strongly opposed to PIPA (and SOPA). This post is an attempt to convince others to …

As I recently posted, SOPA and PIPA, the bills that represent the next step in the media industries’ war on piracy (or, to be fair, what they call piracy), have been getting increasing amounts of attention. And it’s bringing results: just yesterday, the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) was pulled from consideration in the House of Representatives.

While this is a big win for the internet, it’s only part of the battle, because the PROTECT-IP Act (PIPA), a nearly identical bill, is still scheduled for a vote in the Senate on January 24, a week from today. So it’s still not too late to contact your senators and ask them to oppose the bill! Wikipedia has also joined the cause, pledging to black out its site tomorrow to raise awareness.

The Problem with PIPA

A friend of mine recently made a post about SOPA on the FreshySites blog which I think shows how some of the information about what these bills do has been distorted as it’s traveled around the web. With the blackouts of Wikipedia, Reddit, and other sites poised to draw a lot of public attention to the bills, I thought this would be …

I’ve written a couple of posts about SOPA and PIPA, the copyright legislation currently making its way through Congress, and the widespread efforts to stop it. There’s some good news on that front: these pieces of legislation have been attracting increasing amounts of media attention lately, and Congress is beginning to respond. The DNS blocking provisions of the bill have been pulled (for now, at least), removing a threat to one of the foundations of the internet, and over in the Senate, influential senators are asking for a vote on PIPA (the PROTECT-IP Act) to be postponed so the bill can be further reviewed and possibly amended. Additionally, the White House has issued an official response to two petitions calling for President Obama to veto any of this legislation that does pass through Congress, and while he hasn’t promised to do so, it does show that the administration is at least thinking about the implications this legislation would have for free expression online.

But the war against SOPA and PIPA is not over yet, in part because a lot of people just don’t know all this is happening. To raise awareness, Reddit will be proceeding with …