PIPA, but not Middleton

Dear Ms. Boxer and Ms Feinstein,

It troubles me that I have come to find out that you are a supporter of the PIPA bill that will be up for a vote in the Senate on January 24th 2012. As a California resident and voter of yours I have put my faith in you to continue to do the proper thing when it comes to our state and country.

While I do agree that online piracy is an issue in this country and people with original thoughts should not have their work stolen, the PIPA bill as currently written will not promote more creativity, but stifle it for many years to come. Our country was built on the creative outlet of many people who were told no and had no avenue for their ideas. In today's age the Internet has given EVERYONE an avenue to show off their talents to a mass audience. Voting in favor of this bill will not only bring a halt to that creativity it will bring undue consequences to people trying to start their own business or continue their dreams.

As currently written PIPA will give government the right to seek court orders against any site even linking to one with pirated content. Sites that are just starting may not have the man power to check every website they link to yet they will be shut down. This piece of the bill is especially troubling.

"Directs the AG to identify and provide advance notice to operators of nonauthoritative domain name system servers (NDNSSs), financial transaction providers (FTPs), Internet advertising services (IASs), and providers of information location tools (ILTs), including search engines, online directories, and other indexes with hypertext links or referrals to online locations, whose action may be required to prevent such NDN-related ISDIA activity"

Not only will search engines be forced to remove sites with even a hint of online piracy, many search engines will be shells of themselves. The education of young people in this country has been greatly enhanced by the Internet (including my 11 and 7 year old cousins who are immensely smarter than I was growing up due to the usage of Google) and that will slowly erode. If not done in time they will have legislation brought against them, but it is unrealistic to expect websites run by Americans who are trying to run their business to be able to eliminate it all in one fell swoop. The Internet is a home for free speech which will now be curbed due to legislation at every turn.

And Yes I agree 100 percent about stopping pirated content. But there are measures in place right now that can be expanded on. If an artist sees something on You Tube and wants it pulled they can tell them to pull it and they will. We need to make those measures more prominent with overseas sites. But there are better ways to do that than this bill. In fact, today two of your fellow senators backtracked on their support of this bill for that very fact. The slogan on the front of Ms Boxer's website says, "Your Voice Counts." Today, we'll find out if that is a truth or more spin from another politician. I please hope you do the correct thing.

Sincerely,

Rahul Subramanian