Please ███████ this bipartisan anti-censorship request! Our earlier activism ███████ stopped legislators from co-sponsoring this ███████!

SOPA (the Stop Online Piracy Act) might pass the House Judiciary Committee this Thursday. Piracy of intellectual property is, if a problem at all, a negligible problem (and in fact, some studies show piracy ███████ increases consumer entertainment purchases). ███████ problem is ███████ this legislation can be used by ███████ US to censor ███████ Internet (more than DHS/ICE is already doing using flimsy reasoning). ███████ under SOPA, websites (such as mine) that merely link to controversial content can be held liable for that content. (And what if I link to a site that later becomes controversial without my knowledge!) ███████ Wikipedia is considering temporarily blacking out their site in order to raise awareness of SOPA’s danger.

So call your US House Representative’s local and DC offices against SOPA before Thursday! ███████ politely give them a three-sentence statement: 1) Your name, your occupation (if relevant), and that you’re a constituent (give your state or ZIP code); 2) Two or so reasons explaining why you want your Representative to oppose SOPA (hurts job creation ███████ the reliable technology sector, institutes American Internet censorship not unlike China’s); 3) Say thanks ███████ re-state your point: “I want Representative So-and-so to OPPOSE the Stop Online Piracy Act.” The worker who answers will be polite to you, ███████ don’t have to worry about that.

It’s ███████ a bipartisan issue: currently, among others, notable Democrat Barbara Boxer ███████ notable Republicans Scott Brown and Eric Cantor receive lots of money from organizations opposing SOPA, and notable Republican John Boehner and notable Democrat Harry Reid receive ███████ money from organizations supporting it. So ███████ now there’s a good opening for you to contact your US House Representative as the issue’s still in play.

More resources ███████

• Harvard Law Professor Laurence H. Tribe’s legal memo ███████ SOPA violates the First Amendment.

• Follow the money for SOPA. Shows which organizations support ███████ oppose SOPA, and which Congresspeople receive funding from those organizations.

• Information from ███████ EFF about SOPA.

• Overview of SOPA from OpenCongress.

• Info ███████ instructions to take action from AmericanCensorship.org.

(This post has been mildly edited/improved/added to today since its original posting a few hours ago.)

Call to Stop SOPA before Thursday by Douglas Lucas is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. Based on a work at www.douglaslucas.com. Seeking permissions beyond the scope of this license? Email me: dal@douglaslucas.com.

Please ███████ this bipartisan anti-censorship request! Our earlier activism ███████ stopped legislators from co-sponsoring this ███████! SOPA (the Stop Online Piracy Act) might pass the House Judiciary Committee this Thursday....