Wrote my reps too. Was very disappointed that my Democratic Senator Kirsten Gillibrand who I had campaigned for and donated to as a congresswoman supported PIPA, as well as other Senators I generally respect, like Pat Leahy from VT, who generally seems like a good guy. Guess that's the power of money and lobbying (and also not having technically competent staff that doesn't really get into the techie details of some of these bills as much as they should and is surprised when there's an outcry). Hope the protest changed their minds!

One thing users of Phish.net know is that we are already vigilant about enforcing copyright laws and protecting rightsholders. Our site's Terms of Use prohibit posting copyrighted materials (like pirate links to LivePhish.com soundboards, as opposed to band allowed audience recordings). We request (and receive) permission to sometimes reproduce Phish’s copyrighted photos and videos. When we do, we properly display their ©.

Anyone who has tried to post links to copyrighted materials in the forum for instance knows that admins (and users!) enforce the ToU with thumbs down and calling out violators.

While we don’t think Phish would ride roughshod over ToU enforcement in a SOPA/PIPA world, the same cannot be said for many other corporations. We know the RIAA and MPAA have tried to sue individual users, sometimes children, over downloading pirate materials. In countries like China and Russia (as well as here with WikiLeaks), the copyright laws are sometimes used to quash political dissent, by forcing payment processors or advertisers not to use a site, or jailing dissidents who have unlicensed copies of software like Microsoft Word on their hard drives, as a pretext.

We already have tools to go after piracy, which is less of a problem anyway with subscription service models like iTunes, Spotify and Netflix. SOPA/PIPA is a sledgehammer approach to kill a fly, and anyone who thinks folks like the RIAA and MPAA should just be able to shut down entire websites on their say-so without notice and opportunity for the sites to respond is advocating for a world like George Orwell would have imagined in 1984.