To our representatives in Congress.

Please join your fellow representatives in opposing Representative Smith’s “Stop Online Piracy Act” and Senator Leahy’s “Protect IP Act”.

There is no credible evidence that this act is necessary. None. The Government Accountability Office has stated that it is “difficult, if not impossible, to quantify the net effect of counterfeiting and piracy on the economy as a whole.”

http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-10-423

Recent studies have shown that the big content industries seem to be weathering the current recession better than other industries.

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/11/piracy-problems-us-copyright-industries-show-terrific-health.ars

Copyright law is meant to encourage creativity. There is no evidence that creative output has declined, in fact with the freedom of the Internet, we see a flowering of creativity and access to publication never before witnessed. A survey study by Felix Oberholzer-Gee of the Harvard Business School found that “data on the supply of new works are consistent with the argument that file sharing did not discourage authors and publishers” from producing more works.

http://www.hbs.edu/research/pdf/09-132.pdf

In addition SOPA and PIPA may in fact be unconstitutional.

Elrod v. Burns (1973) states: “If the State has open to it a less drastic way of satisfying its legitimate interests, it may not choose a legislative scheme that broadly stifles the exercise of fundamental personal liberties.”

http://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=15626322637942632899&hl=en&as_sdt=2&as_vis=1&oi=scholarr

SOPA and PIPA go far beyond being the least drastic way to limit copyright infringement.

I am a media creator. What I need from my Congress is protection against malware. I need a reduction of spam. I need support for better Internet infrastructure. These are important problems that I wish Congress would address. I do not need SOPA or PIPA.

Thank you for your time.

Sincerely,

Tom Merritt
Citizen of California
District 6