Yesterday, I gave $1,000 to Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon. With this post I want to convince you to do the same (or at least give something to him).
Why? Because Ron Wyden has taken a stand against the awful proposed law known as COICA. If you don’t know what COICA is or why it is a terrible idea, please read my previous post about it. In that post, I provide a link to the page on the amazing Maplight.org that shows who has contributed to which Senator.
First, interest groups that support COICA have given 32x as much as interest groups that oppose ($5.3 million versus $167 thousand). Second, some of the key Senators on the Judiciary Committee, which disappointingly voted 19:0 to approve COICA, are among the biggest recipients of donations from interest groups that support COICA. Sadly, that includes Senator Chuck Schumer from New York (whom I have given to and voted for), Senator Patrick Leahy from Vermont (whom I know personally), and Al Franken (who received almost half a million from organizations that support COICA), which helps explain this apropos tweet by Jeff Jarvis.
So please join me in giving to Senator Ron Wyden. And please help spread this message. We can use the Internet to help defend the Internet and freedom of speech by defeating COICA. It will take only a few hundred donations of $1,000 or a few thousand of $100 to demonstrate to law makers that with the Internet, individuals are more powerful than lobbying groups. So donate and show the entertainment industry that they cannot buy a law that would fail miserably at its stated purpose and instead would undermine the foundations of the Internet (and our ability to credibly argue against Internet censorship around the world).
