In America, we have some pretty savvy politicians in Congress. At the same time, they can be clueless about their constituents. The Senators and Congressmen who have been on the hill for some time definitely know how the political game is played. It isn't pretty and can be downright cutthroat. Last week, we had an internet uprising that they still don't understand.
Senator Patrick "Dipstick" Leahy sponsored the PIPA legislation and ran it through the Senate committee unopposed. Sen. Harry Reid was planning to zip it through the Senate floor without much discussion. Meanwhile Congressman Lamar "Dopey" Smith had crafted his bill, SOPA, and already had a majority of support in the House and was pushing to put it to a vote. Dipstick and Dopey had been heavily lobbied by the entertainment industries to push this legislation through ASAP!
The EFF (Electronic Freedom Frontier) had poured over the bills and were crying foul and putting up red flags. I'm not sure where I heard about it first but there was language in both bills that would basically change how our sacred internet worked. There were people all over the net screaming this must be stopped! Dopey claimed that anyone opposing his bill "just didn't understand it."
The first victim in this scandal was Godaddy.com who supported the bill originally. Online, there was a boycott organized to move away from using GoDaddy. In just a few days, they lost thousands of customers and changed their stance about the legislation. In forcing a large corporation to withdraw its support, internet users gained more momentum. Other companies like Google took notice of the revolt.
Google decided to get behind the movement rather than oppose it. Wikipedia and Reddit announced Wednesday that they would "blackout" their sites for 12 hours. Google followed suit with a blackout of their logo in support. Many other sites participated in black Wednesday. There was a call for petitions to be signed, calls to Congress and email demonstrations against the two bills. Google's petition alone garnered over 8 million signatures. The people spoke!
Dopey announced that it was "a publicity stunt" and that he didn't understand why anyone wouldn't want copyright holders protected. Dipstick simply blamed all the defectors who pulled their support. They still don't realize that it was a grassroots movement and that it was not lead by Google or any other website. Google et al..simply responded to the sentiment on the net and helped have our voices heard. It was a swift movement of netizens that crushed SOPA/PIPA.
The problem remains..Dipstick is already vowing to confront this "problem" after a brief delay. The RIAA and MPAA are both clearly involved. Chris Dodd, CEO of the MPAA and former Senator claims the protest was "white noise" making it impossible to have further conversation. Obviously the protest fell on deaf ears. It's going to be up to all of us to keep them in line.
Get lobbyists and PAC's out of our politics. The politicians serve their dollar wielding masters instead of their constituents. It's time to have a voice again people! Stop just doing as you're told and start paying attention to the world around you...or I promise, you will not like the results.
No comments:
Post a Comment