Tell Obama And Dodd: No Backroom Dealing, No New SOPA

The political buzz generated by this is slightly less than a gnat in the Rose Garden. Demand Progress is a liberal group. Obama can safely ignore this effort and most likely won't lose votes among the Democratic base. If he alienates Hollywood, though, he could lose out on significant fundraising, which is critical for his re-election.

The link is http://act.demandprogress.org/act/new_sopa/

The real problem is, people (not just politicians) want to hold on to the paradigm that you should be allowed to monopolize an idea. Ideas are not scarce resources like food or wood. Everyone on the planet can simultaneously use an idea without violating the physical property of anyone else.

I think in general, people like to fantasize about coming up with a great idea first, and becoming rich from it. This is only possible when the government allows you to monopolize an idea. SOPA is about monopolizing ideas.

I'm not sure that "No New SOPA" is really that useful a thing to demand from the President. Given that the entire bill could potentially be rewritten, there's no central concept of what "SOPA" is.

Let's lay down a series of principles that we do not want violated, rather than say "don't do that again". The same applies to "backroom dealing"- when is a deal a backroom and and when isn't it? Let's be specific in what we want, here.