SOPA / PIPA and the 2012-01-18 Blackout

Here's a form letter I created that you can feel free to adopt for you own usage:

Dear Senator / Congress Person _____ ['s legislative aid],  

I'm writing today about the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and PROTECT IP Act (PIPA), but now I'm annoyed that your office doesn't even have a "Topic" on your contact page for Technology. I imagine this is an outcropping of the same lack of technological awareness that has lead our Most Deliberative Body to unanimous past support for the horrendous Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA). I can only assume it is this chronic misunderstanding of America's high tech economy that now prepares support for SOPA / PIPA, without regard for the underlying structure of the internet that everyone claims to value so highly as the source of our nation's future revenues. As a _____ professional at _____ that greatly benefits from unrestricted, uncensored internet access, I can only say that I am figuratively shocked and literally appalled that this kind of legislation has gotten so far, especially given the lip service paid by politicians to the "job creators" in the technology sector. If Congress truly values the creation of 21st century jobs, if the Democrats really want to "Win the Future" (seriously, whoever came up with that slogan watched way too much "X-Files"), then lobbyist fodder like SOPA / PIPA should never live to see the light of day outside of its authors' offices on K-Street. 

To quote the most useful source of general knowledge every created in the history of mankind, Wikipedia, on this the day of their historic (and heroic) blackout:

SOPA and PIPA cripple the free and open internet. They put the onus on website owners to police user-contributed material and call for the blocking of entire sites, even if the links are not to infringing material. Small sites will not have the sufficient resources to mount a legal challenge. Without opposition, large media companies may seek to cut off funding sources for small competing foreign sites, even if big media are wrong. Foreign sites will be blacklisted, which means they won't show up in major search engines.

I wholeheartedly agree, and I hope your office does as well. These bills don't need to be 'adjusted', they need to be torn up. The content cartels in Hollywood and elsewhere don't need any further anti-competitive protections, or any more custom written laws from their lobbyists straight into the law books; they need new business models. New technology, not new laws, will save the wages of our artists and content producers. Bills like the DMCA, CTEA, SOPA, PIPA, et al, can do nothing but stifle our greatest innovators in a blind effort to save a stagnant oligopoly chronically uninterested in changing it's ways to meet producer or consumer demands. 

Thank you for your service to the great State of _____, and to the United States of America, 

_____