I sent this message to Representative Nancy Pelosi, Senator Barbara Boxer, and Senator Diane Feinstein:
Representative Pelosi / Senator Boxer / Senator Feinstein:
I am writing to express my opposition to the anti-piracy legislation SOPA and PIPA. As a member of a private industrial research lab, my life and work depend critically on a free environment of information on the internet, and I believe this environment would be dangerously infringed by either of these bills.
However, I do not believe it is optimal or sufficient to attack these bills directly. Rather, the true culprit behind such legislation is a campaign financing system which disproportionally rewards lobbying efforts and shifts the interests of congress away from the constituents who elect them. Therefore, I urge you to strongly support legislation for citizen funded elections to return control to individuals and voters. Even if SOPA and PIPA are the more important problem, campaign finance reform is the first problem, since its failure lies at the root of nearly all other issues.
Thank you for your time,
Geoffrey Irving
More information
Here’s a collection of links borrowed from Jed Brown with more information on these subjects. I intentionally left this kind of thing out of the above message, since I think it has more weight if I express a direct personal opinion rather than a copied sentiment (even though its entirely both). Please let me know if you think including links in such messages is better.