It shames me as citizen of the United States Of America to be represented by an elected government of the people who are promoting legislation that would potentially censor free speech on the Internet, which by birthright as an American innovation, should enjoy the same freedoms that every American citizen is granted through the Bill Of Rights. America has stood as a shining example to the entire world that nothing is impossible when the rights of the people are protected. Time and time again, America has helped advance the human race through medicine, technology, free press and free ideas for nearly 236 years.
However, within the same country that promotes freedom, the same country that condemns oppression, a great evil poisons it. There are large corporations who profit from the control of intellectual property from news media to music, motion pictures and television. These industries have been able to convince our elected officials that they are losing money, threatening layoffs and closures because of it, and have asked through lobbyists to be granted the power to control the Internet in ways that we, as a country, continually condemn in foreign lands such as China, North Korea, and Iran.
Two bills being deliberated in Congress essentially gives corporations the ability to censor the Internet as they see fit, all in the name of policing piracy and copyright infringement. While the cause is a noble one, the fact remains that corporations have never been trustworthy with peoples rights. The news media has been known to hack cellphones. The recording industry has been known to drag innocent people through expensive trials for piracy, even implicating dead grandmothers, and to assert rights over copyrighted or copyleft material in which it has no right to do so. And the list goes on. Remember when the banking industry needed to be bailed out? How many people had their homes foreclosed while executives were getting big dollar bonuses? The last thing we need is to give corporations the right to make anything disappear from the Internet in which they may or not agree with.
Every elected member of the US Congress recites the following oath:
“I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God.”
So I put it to task every member of Congress, including my own representatives, Rep. Marcia Fudge [D-OH11] in the House, and Sen. Sherrod Brown [D-OH] and Sen. Robert Portman [R-OH] in the Senate . Do your job and kill the proposals of SOPA and PIPA as well as any future proposals that would do the same. The rights of the people are to be protected by those we as a people elect to defend them.
