Dear Senator Franken, Please Oppose PIPA

Dear Senator Franken,

I am not your constituent, but since I receive periodic fundraising appeals from you, I thought I might impose on you with a request: Please withdraw your sponsorship of S968, the Protect IP Act (PIPA).

You've been in the forefront of protecting online networks through initiatives such as net.neutrality. That's why it troubles me deeply to see you supporting PIPA.

I know you are probably hearing a lot about the First Amendment implications of allowing bureaucrats to shutdown Internet resources without due process. I'd like to raise another issue.

Implementing PIPA would break some of the fundamental mechanisms of the Internet. The future of the DNS (the directory service that maps www.alfranken.com to host address 69.25.201.137) is one that is secured end-to-end, to protect users (and publishers) against against forgery or spoofing. This is incompatible with the sort of filtering and delisting that is required by this legislation.

That's one reason why you see so many well known Internet engineers signing onto a letter protesting this legislation.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2011/12/internet-inventors-warn-against-so...

I hope that as a media person you would be in a particularly good position to help find the balance between protecting the property rights and free speech rights of the content producers. I hope that as a smart person, you would recognize the importance of listening to the subject matter experts, such as distinguished Internet engineers.

Thanks for your past advocacy for Internet users and content producers. I hope you will choose to help them on this issue as well.