Senator.

I am writing to express my opposition to SOPA and its sister bill PIPA. As
a conservative voter, I am opposed to government regulation of this sort.
The kind of regulation that is over-reaching, will be ineffective, will
place an undue burden and added cost onto the American citizen. As you
well know, regulatory compliance costs will always be passed onto the
American consumer for this kind of effort and will afford NO benefit to
any of us as it fails to address the true problems facing Big Media.

I understand that you receive a lot of money from Big Media but this is no
excuse to compromise your principals and suddenly support regulation. I
will most certainly be looking for another candidate to challenge you
during your next election cycle, one that cannot be bought by Hollywood,
one that believes in smaller government and less regulation and one that
understands that the fight against piracy is that of the Big Media
companies and not that of the American taxpayer. Whether that candidate is
you depends on the decisions you make in the coming weeks. You either take
your Hollywood money and support massive global regulation or you use
common sense and find another solution.

You fight casual piracy with VALUE and availability. Make products
available and at a reasonable cost and you will sell the product. Apple
proved this with iTunes in the USA. Unfortunately, Big Media still hasn’t
got the message! Television shows are unavailable through iTunes in some
countries. In Canada, for example, a consumer doesn’t have access to
purchase the American television shows that they want to watch because Big
Media refuse to license their “valuable” content there. They have
themselves to blame for casual piracy and should take a long look within
to truly understand why this closed model is failing. People will always
find the content they choose to consume, it’s up to Big Media to get into
the game and make it easily accessible at a good value so that consumers
have an option other than BitTorrent. This is the only thing that will
combat casual piracy.

Mass piracy is a different matter. We have existing laws to deal with
this. They should be enforced but the financial burden should fall onto
the Big Media companies and not the American tax payer, we shouldn’t have
to finance their failing business model.

I expect you to withdraw your support of SOPA and work to find a common
sense solution to the problem rather than a draconian effort to lock down
the internet and punish innocent American. A solution that puts the onus
and financial responsibility onto the Big Media companies that you are
trying to protect. A solution that protects the American Citizen from the
burden of regulation and the judicial brutality of these irresponsible,
out of touch companies.

Sincerely,