Texas Congressman Lamar Smith, sponsor of the Stop Online Piracy Act that has moved a number of sites, including Craigslist and Reddit to shut down for the day, accuses the biggest name involved in the blackouts, Wikipedia, of doing a disservice to its users by inciting outrage over the piece of legislation.
“It is ironic that a website dedicated to providing information is spreading misinformation about the Stop Online Piracy Act,” Smith said in a statement released yesterday. “The bill will not harm Wikipedia, domestic blogs or social networking sites. This publicity stunt does a disservice to its users by promoting fear instead of facts. Perhaps during the blackout, Internet users can look elsewhere for an accurate definition of online piracy.”
Opponents of the bill — which includes a lot of people from a wide variety of backgrounds — say it will stifle innovation and stunt growth of Internet start-ups, but Smith countered that they are simply mistaken.
“It’s disappointing that some SOPA critics appear not to have read the bill,” he said. “This bill will not censor the Internet. But it will protect American workers, inventors and job creators from foreign thieves who steal our products, technology and intellectual property.”
Speaking of intellectual property, according to this Vice.com story, Congressman’s Smith’s own re-election site was caught using a Creative Commons photo without any credit to the photographer (a big no-no).
“So according to the SOPA bill, should it pass, maybe I could petition the court to take action against http://www.texansforlamarsmith.com,”; the photographer told Vice.
Sponsor of online piracy bill calls Wikipedia blackout a ‘publicity stunt’ [TheHill.com]
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His picture here makes him look like stepford husband.
This is shallow, but I don’t trust him based on his hair.
Know what? If you don’t live in his district you can’t email him through his website. BOO!!!!
R.I.P. Ed Foster from the infamous Gripe Line
“He graduated from T.M.I.: The Episcopal School of Texas (1965), Yale University (1969), and Southern Methodist University Law School (1975).
In 1969, he was hired as a management intern by the Small Business Administration in Washington, DC. He was a business and financial writer for the Christian Science Monitor in 1970. He was admitted to the State bar of Texas in 1975. He went into private practice in San Antonio with the firm of Maebius and Duncan, Inc.[3]” -wiki
how about you leave the internet to the engineers?
Funny how this kind of thing makes you miss Ted Stevens…
Don’t believe them, they will try and push this through another way…quietly. We have to make sure those that are friendly to SOPA and PIPA are voted out as quickly as possible.
Has anyone else noticed how lately how everyone is using projection? Not to put pictures of stuff up on the wall; projection is a psychological defense mechanism whereby you take your worst quality and project it on to the people who disagree with you.
In this case, we have Congressman Smith. who is using misinformation to sponsor and promote his bill, accusing the people who oppose him as the ones who are actually spreading the misinformation.
At the risk of starting some sort of flame way, I just have to point out this appears to the the tactic of choice for the Republican Party these days. To cite one example, they ran an entire presidential campaign on the slogan “Country First,” and they then spent the next 3 years acting like it’s “Party First”.