A lot of people say that SIRA is a good thing, why does IPac oppose it?

SIRA has a laudable goal of bringing mechanical licensing into the 21st century, but in doing so changes the balance of fair use. The biggest issue is how SIRA deals with incidental copies. Right now incidental copies, like buffers of internet radio stations do not need to be licensed because they fall under fair use. In order to have a quality stream, the file needs to be buffered and cached. SIRA would, for the first time, define these incidental copies as licensable and would require a license for them. Even if the license is royalty free now, it is dangerous to require them to be licensed at all.

How does SIRA impact me as a consumer?

SIRA doesn’t deal with the end user directly. It’s a bill between big businesses to determine how to deal with mechanical licensing. Ultimately, we are the ones that feel the repercussions. If incidental copies like buffers are licensable, Tivo could be in big trouble. They don’t need a license to time shift tv, but with a precedent like SIRA on the books, they could be forced to get a license for their live tv buffer. That could be all that is needed by the cable companies to squeeze them out of the PVR market.

Who else opposes SIRA?

Over a dozen of companies, non profits, and trade organizations wrote Congresses to express their opposition to SIRA. The letter can be found here, but here is the list that signed on:

American Association of Law Libraries
BellSouth Corporation
Bonneville International Corp.
Computer & Communications Industry Association
Consumer Electronics Association
Consumer Project on Technology
Cox Radio, Inc.
Electronic Frontier Foundation
Entercom Communications Corp
Greater Media, Inc.
Home Recording Rights Coalition
Local Radio Internet Coalition
National Religious Broadcasters Music License Committee
Public Knowledge
RadioShack Corporation
Salem Communications Corp.
Sirius Satellite Radio Inc.
U.S. Public Policy Committee of the Association for Computing Machinery (USACM)
XM Satellite Radio Inc.

Why did two of IPac’s Fab Four vote SIRA out of the subcommittee?

Reps Boucher and Lofgren are two of IPac’s endorsed candidates and they voted SIRA out of subcommittee. This was a procedural vote and not at all the last one. Both Rep Boucher and Lofgren are staunch supporters of balanced information policy and both expressed serious reservations about SIRA during the markup process. This vote just moved the bill to the full committee where the amendment process will begin.

I made tons of phone calls about SIRA, has my work done anything?

Absolutely!

This bill was supposed to sail right through Congress without a fight. Your phone calls and letters let everyone in Congress know that SIRA is controversial and requires serious amendments.

I’ve received dozens of emails from people letting me know how their phone calls went and I can tell you from those and other sources that Congress was unprepared for our attack and is taking a serious look at how to fix SIRA.

You’ve done an amazing job, but we can’t let up now.

Why does IPac support Reps Barton and Miller if they voted against Net Neutrality?

IPac works on a range of information policy issues, and our races will reflect that breadth. While we may not agree with all of our candidates on all issues, both Rep Barton and Miller deserve our support. Rep Barton has used his powerful committee chairmanship to introduce great pieces of legislation and grill Hollywood cartel executives when they come before his committee. He gets how out of balance our information policy is and is committed to changing it.

Rep. Miller doesn’t have a committee chairmanship, but if we want to encourage other Members and challengers to support balanced information policy, we need to support up and coming Members. We need to let every first and second term Congress member know that there are votes, volunteers, and money in standing up the Hollywood cartels. By supporting Rep Miller we send a strong message that being in favor of balanced information policy isn’t just a principled stand, but a political one too.

IPac may disagree with their stances on Net Neutrality, but we need allies like Barton and Miller in the House.

Why isn’t my Congress member on IPac’s list?

Although we’d like to get involved in every Congressional race this year, we don’t have the time, money, or staff to do so. We feel that by targeting a few races we can have the biggest impact both in terms of public support and financial support. Unlike the Hollywood cartels, we don’t have millions of dollars to spread around so we have to spend our money wisely. This does have the advantage of putting Reps on notice that by coming on board with IPac’s principles is a tenable political position.

That being said, we have over a dozen volunteers working to compile a Congressional scorecard so you can find out how your Representatives voted on key issues. It’s a long and time consuming process, but rest assured it is being worked on and should be done soon.