For those of you who are American, I’m sure you know we appear on the precipice of some dark days. If you’ve not attempted to access Wikipedia today, you might take a moment to do so- it’s not working. Instead, there is a message up regarding Wikipedia’s protest of the legislation before Congress known as SOPA and PIPA.
“The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), also known as House Bill 3261 or H.R. 3261, is a bill that was introduced in the United States House of Representatives on October 26, 2011, by House Judiciary Committee Chair Representative Lamar S. Smith (R-TX) and a bipartisan group of 12 initial co-sponsors. The bill, if made law, would expand the ability of U.S. law enforcement and copyright holders to fight online trafficking in copyrighted intellectual property and counterfeit goods. Presented to the House Judiciary Committee, it builds on the similar PRO-IP Act of 2008 and the corresponding Senate bill, the PROTECT IP Act.
The originally proposed bill would allow the U.S. Department of Justice, as well as copyright holders, to seek court orders against websites accused of enabling or facilitating copyright infringement. Depending on who makes the request, the court order could include barring online advertising networks and payment facilitators from doing business with the allegedly infringing website, barring search engines from linking to such sites, and requiring Internet service providers to block access to such sites. The bill would make unauthorized streaming of copyrighted content a crime, with a maximum penalty of five years in prison for ten such infringements within six months. The bill also gives immunity to Internet services that voluntarily take action against websites dedicated to infringement, while making liable for damages any copyright holder who knowingly misrepresents that a website is dedicated to infringement.” (Wiki)
This is a big bag of bullshit, since it’d mean the death of great sites like mediafire, megaupload, and every music blog on Earth. Additionally, large corporations could sue the bejeesus out of any small site they wanted to silence them for their views if there was something that could be construed as copyright infringement on that site… including me.
“The PROTECT IP Act (Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property Act of 2011 or PIPA), also known as Senate Bill 968 or S. 968, is a proposed law with the stated goal of giving the US government and copyright holders additional tools to curb access to “rogue websites dedicated to infringing or counterfeit goods”, especially those registered outside the U.S. The bill was introduced on May 12, 2011, by Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and 11 bipartisan co-sponsors. The Congressional Budget Office estimated that implementation of the bill would cost the federal government $47 million through 2016, to cover enforcement costs and the hiring and training of 22 new special agents and 26 support staff.” (Wiki)
This means we get to pay for policing the internet in other nations, which is even more awesome, since the US is broke as fuck. Thus, politicians want to blow more of your money on overseas adventures that net the taxpayer nothing but failed downloads and more cops.
If you’re lazy as fuck, feel free to copy my email, which I’ve got below. You can find out to whom you should send it by going to Wikipedia and entering your zip code. For those fuzzy foreigners among you, I guess you can sit around with your thumbs up your asses like you do in any global conflict. Russians, continue torturing cats or whatever it is you do in your free time.
My email (which I sent to all of my local Congressmen):
I am typically loathe to address my elected representatives due to the fact that I am quite sure that they do not represent me. In spite of this fact, sir, I am reaching out to you to voice my displeasure with the looming legislation regarding the extension of the United States’ burgeoning police state to the internet. I refer, of course, to the bills before Congress known colloquially as SOPA and PIPA. While I am sure you and your colleagues stand to gain a great deal monetarily from your support of such legislation, I would appeal to whatever humanity you have left and ask that you refrain from making the lives of your constituents any more awful than you have already done with the last ten years of violent mismanagement of our nation’s economy.
In an America where virtually all hope for a better future is lost, I would ask that you leave us our present. Congress and the White House have certainly done enough to destroy what’s left of our former beacon of freedom, and the limitation of the free flow of information would certainly seal freedom’s coffin.
Additionally, I will appeal to your inhuman side ans state, for a fact, that I do not know of a single person who would allow a politician into their home at this point- your profession is viewed with the same distaste people generally reserve for grave robbers and child pornographers. Perhaps if you would find it in your blackened heart to refrain from making our already bleak lives more unpleasant, you could see your approval ratings rise from “I would vigorously defend my property with deadly force against this man’s incursion if he happened to chase a stray baseball into my yard” to “I would not spit on that person on the street if given the opportunity”. That, of course, was not a threat, but rather a tongue-in-cheek reference to Congress’s historically (and comically) low approval ratings.
A good day to you,
Jameson Lewis
For those of you who don’t give a shit about any of this, you’re fucking retarded. In any event, I should have a new Baddest Motherfucker up tomorrow about Stan Efferding, and will give you an update from RAW Unity over the weekend (including a heads up about how Johnny Jackson does). Until then, tits.
I loled real hard.
If you get a response to that email please post it.
Hilarious! I used it.
Wish I'd waited to email my "representatives." Your letter was much longer and better than mine. I figure they just make tally marks for each letter they get on each side of the issue, so I didn't put much effort into it.
On an unrelated note: If you haven't already gotten some Olympic lifting shoes, you should check them out! I think they might be very useful for your wrapless, beltless competition squats. I just got a pair recently, and they have drastically reduced my perceived "need" for a belt. I guess this is because they allow me to get to full depth without bending over so much. Obviously they make squatting easier on the knees, and are probably at least as good if not better than wraps for knee health. The stability of the hard sole is surprisingly helpful too, to the point where they even seem to help my overhead lifts. Some of them are a little expensive, but probably not any worse in the long run than buying cargo shorts once a month.
Thanks for the e-mail. I used it as it managed to be pissed off without being nearly as offensive as what I had typed up.
I sent your email to my rep and senators, then realized that I'm an Afghan and an ethnic Pashtun. Given NDAA just passed, I am awaiting the imminent arrival of the government at my door.
Scary stuff, although it has been shelved for the time being. It had massive objections from everyone except the music and film industry, even the white house condemned it. It will be a pretty grim future if this does go through, but it looks unlikely for now.
everyone who used wikipedia would have either
-went to the google cached version
-pressed esc before it went black
-turned javascript off
worked fine for me last night.
Decent letter Jameson… although you did spell "and" wrong in the final paragraph. I bet your congressman and his buddies are having a jolly old chortle over that.
Living in England is bad enough and I am thankful that I'm not a yank but I have faith that our fatter, transatlantic cousins will do the right thing and prevent this legislation.
Went to Poland recently, the women are outstanding and everything is cheap. Time to emigrate.
This shit kinda reminds me of the lawsuits against torrent sites a couple of years ago, only, because of their massive failures back then, they now decided to create a bulletproof law underpinned with a 'take no prisoners' mentality before filing another shit-ton of lawsuits.
I bet they'll be suing the shit out of the exact same websites they did a while back, and probably a good chunk of others, and this time happily (and most likely hypocritically) thanks to their new found empowerment.
I'm with matthew. Englands going to shit. especially with our cunt of a prime minister and his bot jokes like "neverendum" fucking twat.
anyway. this reminded me of a rant on youtube.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wroa2s7g5yk&feature=related
Given characters like Lara Croft and Indiana Jones I'm guessing that grave robbers are way ahead of politicians in the popularity stakes.
Off topic, but I'm going to second the Oly shoe recommendation. Good for squatting and I've also found that they help with overhead press. These are what I have:
http://www.roguefitness.com/rogue-equipment/rogue-do-wins/rogue-weightlifting-shoes.php
Decently priced for a lifting shoe and don't look like ass.
Nice letter. Hey – good luck at Unity, not that you'll need it.
"Jameson"'s porn is always copyrighted, except in the cases where it is illegal.
Agreed England sucks complete balls also. I'm tempted to emigrate to Germany just for the meat and women.
But then you have Turks. Good food, but they're generally assholes otherwise.
Ture story, they will use any reason to fuck over an american. I got pulled over and they had me do a breathalyzer, just because I drive an american car.
Haha true, in my hometown there are 4 kebab shops all down the same high street which makes for good eats when out drinking.
Fortunately in the UK we dont have the mass stupidity I saw in America, it was scary at times and I can relate to what Jamie says about a lot of the people over there
In fairness some of the states are awesome and some are full of complete retards in my experience. Kind of like the difference between Essex and the rest of the UK haha.
C&P and is still an overcompensating douchebag I see. Well it's good to see that some things never change. LOL!
Like your pre-school reading comprehension. LOL!
Oh shit, the real Rant! Gulp, i'd better lay low…
"Sopa and Pipa votes shelved after Congress climbs down on piracy bills"
Spiffing. I'm guessing Megaupload are still getting fucked over though haha…
On another unrelated note:
Behold the power of Indigo-3G, making you weaker than you look
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t4vt8KOrOZs&feature=player_embedded#!
Christ
Jamie is somewhat scarier when being polite. It's like Bruce Banner writing the letter.
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