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List of every member of congress who supports SOPA, sortable by donations
- CWIZO 15y agoI was surprised there are more democrats for SOPA than there are republicans.
- jsundquist 15y agoCWIZO, Unfortunately many democrats live in areas where the Movie, recording industry is located...therefore they get lots of $$ from them. Thus the widespread support from both dems and republicans. This depresses me even more: http://www.opensecrets.org/pres08/indus.php?cid=N00009638 http://www.opensecrets.org/pres08/indus.php?cid=N00009638 Obama got almost $9 million from the Movie industry. I would suspect he would not veto it.
- kmfrk 15y agoMakes you wonder how much worse things are going to get with the introduction of SuperPACs.
- jsundquist 15y agoExactly. Just imagine the cash flowing from the Movie/Music industry directly in their pockets. With that happening I don't see how it can be stopped. They will just keep trying.
- kmfrk 15y agoI also think that instead of backing down from supporting legislature like SOPA in the future with all the backlash, they'll just stop supporting it publically.
- sgaither 15y agoMuch of Hollywood/traditional media leans left. Most of the Dems against it are in the Silicon Valley.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- thetrendycyborg 15y agoCalifornia's Dems are co-sponsors.
- taf2 15y agoNews flash - party lines are meaningless .
- wyclif 15y agoWhy would that surprise you? Hollywood nearly owns the Democratic Party.
- CWIZO 15y agoI'm not from the USA and my knowledge of your political system is mostly based on the daily show (& colbert report), so it always seemed to me, that SOPA is something that the republicans would be crazy about.
- ams6110 15y agoThose sources are definitely not unbiased. I'm sure you know this, so you need to either temper them with some Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity, or seek out some neutral reporting (sadly hard to find).
- Jach 15y agoThey may be biased but they're nowhere near the level of make-stuff-up and outright brainwashing that Limbaugh and Hannity are at so frequently. I wouldn't recommend those characters to anyone. Plus the Daily Show is primarily comedy rather than news, the news is incidental to understanding the comedy. I get my primary news from non-US websites like BBC and Al Jazeera (and tech-specific websites like Ars for interesting news) and what floats over to HN, occasionally I'll watch a few youtube channels, if I feel like paddling down piss-creek I'll watch CNN which is probably what the GP is looking for if they want modest bias in the other direction.
- evoxed 15y agoWell Rush Limbaugh is comedy too, in a "Leprechaun: Back 2 Tha Hood-want-to-throw-up-in-your-mouth-it's-so-bad" kind of way.
- knowtheory 15y agoFrom a historical perspective, the Democratic support for corporate media stretches back at least as far as Lyndon Johnson. He and his wife were television station owners, and over their lives continued to grow their media holdings. That, presumably, is one of the reasons Johnson knew how screwed he was when he (reportedly) said "If I've lost Cronkite, I've lost Middle America." Interestingly President Johnson's wikipedia page doesn't seem to make reference to the media holdings, but his wife Lady Bird Johnson's page does: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lady_Bird_Johnson#Business_career http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lady_Bird_Johnson#Business_care...
- botker 15y agoDemocrats tend to favor government regulations of any kind, while Republicans are somewhat more likely to oppose them in general. So it doesn't surprise me at all.
- drewblaisdell 15y agoThis may have been true twenty years ago, but it is certainly not true today. Neither party is in favor of limiting government these days.
- botker 15y agoWhile you're right, that's why I wrote "somewhat more likely". Republicans may not favor limited government today, but on average they are still less likely than Democrats to support regulation. The OP's link demonstrates this tendency.
- cjoh 15y agoExcept for regulations regarding who you can and cannot sleep with, what religions you may belong to, and whom you may marry.
- nyellin 15y agoIf you want a "real Republican", vote for Gary Johnson. He's pro-choice and fiscally conservative. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_positions_of_Gary_Johnson http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_positions_of_Gary_Joh...
- jsundquist 15y agoVery depressing. Almost without any exception (I admit there are a couple) every single for or against can be determined by how much money they get from the computer industry(Against) or from the Music / Movie industry (For). All of this happens across party lines...
- GHFigs 15y agoI'm having trouble reconciling this assertion with the fact that I can open the submission, sort by "online/internet" and it seems that those in the supporters column receive substantially larger amounts of money from "online/internet" than do those opposed.
- adamtaylor 15y agoI agree. TV/Movie money seems like a pretty good predictor of vote, but online/internet money much less so. But I'd still like to see an x-y plot with each congressperson a point, and TV/Movie money on one axis, online/internet money on the other, with each point colored by their vote. Then you could really see how separable the two populations are.
- danso 15y agoFor one thing, these are donations in the 2010 cycle. Secondly, all of the top-receiving lawmakers in the "for" category are some of the most senior members of the Senate...and/or represent California, which will have high numbers of constituents from both entertainment and online industries.
- tzs 15y agoWhy is that depressing? If your company were going to make a political contribution, wouldn't you pick politicians whose record indicates they agree with your positions?
- tptacek 15y agoSorry, I meant to upvote you, but misclicked and now you're greyed out. You're making the post-hoc-ergo-propter-hoc point here, right?
- sfaruque 15y agoIt's sad to see that for almost ever 1 SOPA opposing member on the list, there are about 4 supporting members.
- jmonegro 15y agoYeah. After seeing this, I'm pretty sure SOPA will pass...
- incomethax 15y agoIMO the only way to prevent SOPA passing would be Google/Facebook/Wikipedia going the "nuclear option" and putting up a click through page - short of that I doubt something this widely supported would get stopped.
- GHFigs 15y agoThe site does not list every member of Congress.
- sgaither 15y ago"...every congressmember who supports..." There's listings by state and by bill...so everyone in the House is at: http://sopaopera.org/sopa/ http://sopaopera.org/sopa/
- GHFigs 15y agoI should have been clearer. I mean that lists presented on the front page aren't necessarily reflective of the whole voting Congress. One can just as easily say for every opposing member there are twenty whose opinion is unknown, which I think carries a different connotation.
- sgaither 15y agoYeah but politicians who don't have to take a stance yet (i.e. by sponsoring) might just go with status quo...wasn't DMCA passed with a unanimous vote?
- fecklessyouth 15y agoBiggest surprise among supporters: Al "Net Neutrality is the 1st Amendment issue of our time" Franken. Among opponents: Bachmann.
- jsundquist 15y agoSadly the support for it is directly connected to where they get their money from (For democrats and republicans). Here is Bachmann's top sources of donations: http://www.opensecrets.org/politicians/summary.php?cid=N00027493&cycle=2012 http://www.opensecrets.org/politicians/summary.php?cid=N0002... Notice no Movie/Music Industry in the top 5 Then here is Franken's: http://www.opensecrets.org/politicians/summary.php?cid=N00029016&cycle=2012 http://www.opensecrets.org/politicians/summary.php?cid=N0002... Time Warner is his number one supporter. I would imagine that they are for it.
- jsundquist 15y agoJust checked, and Time Warner is on the list of supporters of SOPA: http://theoriesofconspiracy.com/2011/11/list-of-major-companies-supporting-sopa.htm http://theoriesofconspiracy.com/2011/11/list-of-major-compan...
- GHFigs 15y agoTime Warner is his number one supporter OpenSecrets:"The organizations themselves did not donate, rather the money came from the organizations' PACs, their individual members or employees or owners, and those individuals' immediate families." The first clause is in red and bold. (Edit:I apologize to the reader(s) who felt that directly quoting the links cited by the parent comment was objectionable.)
- burgerbrain 15y agoWhat is your point?
- Gormo 15y ago> Sadly the support for it is directly connected to where they get their money from (For democrats and republicans). Chicken or egg?
- fauldsh 15y agoWish there was a way to view who funded them more, basically ($TV|Movie) - ($Online|Internet)
- padraigk 15y agoI wish the table of underlying data was available so that a logistic regression could be run to see whether variables like campaign contributions do indeed predict support for SOPA after age and number of years served have been partialled out.
- tst 15y agoThe data is pretty easily accessible as JSON - however, here's the data I used: http://pastebin.com/nRYv40U8 http://pastebin.com/nRYv40U8 Firstly, a boxplot with the quotient of entertainment contributions to entertainment & internet contributions. http://i.imgur.com/FWQWy.png http://i.imgur.com/FWQWy.png You can see quite easily that there's a difference which is also significant (95%, t = -4.73). I've also done a logistic regression correcting with age, party (is_democrat), seniority and quota of contributions (quota_ent). ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ support | Coef. Std. Err. z P>|z| [95% Conf. Interval] -------------+---------------------------------------------------------------- age | .0258551 .0358136 0.72 0.470 -.0443382 .0960485 is_democrat | -1.252883 .6243361 -2.01 0.045 -2.476559 -.0292067 seniority | -.0262688 .0381962 -0.69 0.492 -.101132 .0485943 quota_ent | 5.839435 1.447732 4.03 0.000 3.001933 8.676938 _cons | -1.968467 2.01512 -0.98 0.329 -5.918029 1.981096 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ The AUC is 0.8089 which is quite okay. Furthermore, it would be interesting to test whether location is a significant factor. Edit: @adamtaylor: Here's a scatter plot with each contribution, transformed with log(1 + x) for readability: http://i.imgur.com/MRciL.png http://i.imgur.com/MRciL.png
- _delirium 15y agoHmm, that scatterplot suggests a less straightforward relationship; the for/against dots look like they plausibly came from slightly different distributions, but not very much different ones.
- steplow 15y agoNo surprise about any of the Dems really: Piracy, copyright, and related issues have been issues for them for a long time, primarily due to their connections with the entertainment industry. It's too bad that they don't understand that hurting the consumer is going to kill the industries that fund them.
- ctingom 15y agoI contacted my senators.
- veyron 15y agoI would like to see the congresspeople who haven't openly supported or opposed SOPA. Those people represent opportunities for education.
- sgaither 15y agohttp://sopaopera.org/sopa/#roll_call http://sopaopera.org/sopa/#roll_call http://sopaopera.org/protect-ip/#roll_call http://sopaopera.org/protect-ip/#roll_call
- rhettg 15y agoCan someone use this data to figure out how much it would cost to make SOPA go away and then setup a kick starter project?
- jadoint 15y agoIs there a site that lists all of the candidates running against pro-SOPA/PIPA representatives? Better yet, a site that allows me to give money to their opponents for the next election cycle (provided they're not pro-SOPA either)?
- martco 15y agorepublicans are more stridently in support of this measure
- gitarr 15y agoThis might be a stupid question, but as a European not all too familiar with US political laws I have to ask: How is it not corruption when senators and congressmens votes can be bought by companies or whole industries?
- asdfasdghasdf 15y agoWhen they say "Time Warner gave $50,0000 to Senator So-and-So," that actually means "People who work for Time Warner gave a total of $50,000 to Senator So-and-So's campaign in donations of no more than $5000 each." It's illegal for a company to donate to a candidate. I think many Americans don't understand that either. Also, surveys have shown that all those donors are giving because they already agree with the senators' views, not because they think they can influence them.
- gdubs 15y agoRight, except that Citizens United ruling by the supreme court allows corporations to spend unlimited funds on 'electioneering communications' (which was previously illegal under the McCain–Feingold Act). Steven Colbert has a 'super pac' which satirizes this state of affairs. To answer the question, there is a grey area between bribery and lobbying. As long as the lobbyist does not violate the law by giving more money than is allowed to a member of congress, and by not explicitly saying that the money is for a vote (one way or another on a particular piece of legislation), it is not considered bribery. Lobbyists will often take legislators on really fancy vacations that are called 'fact finding missions', where everyone stays at a really nice golf resort or something and the lobbyist hasn't actually given the legislator any money, so no laws have been broken. At the end of the day, the legislator can decide to vote however he/she wants, so again, they don't consider it bribery. So, what is bribery of a legislator in the U.S.? You'd probably need someone on tape saying, "I'll vote yes if you give me 200 grand in this swiss bank account". (Or, more simply, see: Rod Blagojevich.)
- noahc 15y agoIn order to understand this you have to understand that in American corporations are persons. When Mitt Romney said, "Corporations are people too" at the Iowa State Fair he wasn't sharing his own personal beliefs. Instead he was telling the truth. See Corporate Personhood[1] for more. From this it follows that Corporations have the right to free speech. This is where the supreme court ruled[2] that it is unconstitutional to deny corporations the right to political speech. The legal requirements are disclosures and that's why you hear "paid for by Americans for a better tomorrow" or something like that. Corporations don't directly give to campaign coffers, but through a series of transactions often via PACs (political action committees) it eventually gets to where it's going. It is illegal for PAC's to coordinate with the campaign, but this does happen in subtle and less than subtle ways. [1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_personhood http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_personhood [2]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_United_v._Federal_Election_Commission http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_United_v._Federal_Elec...
- mahyarm 15y agoWhat I don't understand is why these donation amounts are so low. Do these reps really only get around $25k an industry on average? Do they use these donations personally like it's extra pay or for campaign expenses? Is there a lot more money that we don't see?
- Jach 15y agoSomething we don't necessarily see is what sort of after-retirement deals they have lined up that may be in the millions. I'm sure there are other sources as well. But in general, politicians are pretty cheap.
- beernutz 15y agoExactly! Like Chris Dodd becoming CEO of the MPAA who is reportedly being paid $1.5 million a year as his base salary.
- bcrawl 15y agoReddit site has started implementing their protest. It is redirecting.
- cjoh 15y agoTo me, this is proof positive that campaign contributions are correlative but not causal.
- gammarator 15y agoBoth California Senators (Boxer and Feinstein) are supporters (and co-sponsors!) of Protect-IP. Silicon Valley needs to make its voice heard, and soon.
- gfaremil 15y agoAnd they both live in San Francisco - which shows that it is all about $$ and not about their political views or principles. So this is one of the problems I can see with politics today: politicians have no views or principles you can count on. Everything is depended on how much money they get (of course they all stick and talk about wedge issues such as guns, gays, and god which are really stupid). That is one of main reason people like Ron Paul: you know what you get.
- botker 15y agoIt's interesting to me in part because I tend to think of the SOPA battle as being rooted in the age-old war between North and South -- Silicon Valley vs. Hollywood. Attempting to cripple our industry is just a standard war practice. But to consider that the Senators are both SF residents makes me doubt the premise.
- eleusive 15y agoWhat if a coalition of California-based companies sent emails to their employees informing them of the potential harm this bill could do to their company (and thus each employee's livelihood) with an appeal to send a snail-mail or phone up their senators/representatives? I think especially if the giants (Google, Facebook, etc) got significant amounts of employees to do it then our Congresspeople would take notice. Even if not I think there's enough influence on hackernews to maybe make a difference. Of course this has potential in any state, but the concentration of software companies in California makes it particular interesting IMO.
- ma2rten 15y agoHollywood also lays in California...
- wyclif 15y agoNote that Rep. Ron Paul is the only current Presidential candidate that opposes SOPA.
- josh33 15y agoYes, but many are not members of congress currently - Romney and Gingrich being 2 specifically.
- wyclif 15y agoOpposing SOPA with a vote in Congress isn't the only way for real leaders to register dissent. There's no excuse for Romney or any other candidate to avoid informing the American public that as President, they would veto any future SOPA-like legislation restricting Internet freedom.
- zizee 15y agoThe media companies are all supporting SOPA, so anyone who opposes SOPA is probably worried about the repercussions of going public. I can understand why they might be staying quiet, but I think it is weak and cowardly.
- miked 15y agoAlso, former Senator Christopher Dodd is now CEO of the Motion Picture Association of America. http://washingtonexaminer.com/blogs/beltway-confidential/2011/03/great-2010-cashout-dodd-writes-regulations-hollywood-likes-gets-h http://washingtonexaminer.com/blogs/beltway-confidential/201...
- darkheartfelt 15y agoalso thinks AIDS is the sufferer's fault :( In the end his internet might not be much better.
- nhangen 15y agohas nothing to do with SOPA
- sankalpk 15y agoThis is good advice if you choose to contact someone in congress about this issue. http://www.quora.com/How-do-I-have-a-conversation-with-my-Senator-about-dropping-support-for-SOPA http://www.quora.com/How-do-I-have-a-conversation-with-my-Se...
- DustinCalim 15y agoAlternate title: List of congressmen who have some idea of how the internet works
- callmeed 15y agoHow the hell are both of California's senators FOR this bill?
- toyg 15y agoLos Angeles, CA. Kinda big in the media sector.
- nextparadigms 15y agoGoogle, Facebook and whoever else is going on a blackout before the vote, please link to the politicians who support SOPA, too. The people deserve to know it, and they need to be put against the wall for it, not only so they can't be re-elected again because of this, but also so others don't try to support it, too, fearing the backlash.
- rhizome 15y agoI'd like to see this combined with the SOPA UPC scanner to further cross reference the manufacturer's (and their parents, affiliates, subsidiaries, employees, and...) political donations.
- ballard 15y agoSince senators are mere puppets for various corporations, it would be more effective to identify their corporate allegiances (extend the linked website to include corporate logos) and target ONE corporate donor for systematic boycott. Recall the GoDaddy success.
- RyanMcGreal 15y agoYou know the world has gone mad when Al Franken supports SOPA and Michelle Bachman opposes it.
- thetrendycyborg 15y agoOther possibility: your understanding of the world was flawed and needs to be adjusted. You were mad.
- fauigerzigerk 15y agoDonations of any sort to people running for office should be banned outright without exceptions. It should be worth something to tax payers that politicians cannot be bought.
- brazzy 15y agoResult: instead of donating to their preferred candidate's campaign, donors will now run their own campaign promoting that candidate. Try banning that without running into the First Amendement...
- fauigerzigerk 15y agoI think banning direct donations would at least make it more difficult for those politicians that are motivated by financial gain. Money can buy all kinds of things, not just campaign ads. Also, running an effective campaign for someone else without central coordination of the message is a lot more difficult than what's going on now. Such campaigns can easily backfire. That's why I think the extent of political corruption could be reduced by banning donations.
- snowwrestler 15y agoOnly a truly stupid person would run for political office in search of financial gain. The level of work is extremely high (hours like a startup) but the amounts of money are small. For instance the average House campaign is just a bit over $1 million, and that funds dozens of people working very long hours for almost a year. Compare to capital funding or revenue levels in business. People willing to work that hard could make a lot more money in almost any industry. As hokey as it sounds, people get involved in politics because they want to change the world. It is the natural end result of activism like we are seeing around SOPA. It's possible that at some point, someone fighting SOPA will decide to work for a candidate or run for office themselves. At that point they'll need to start raising funds. Will that corrupt them automatically? I don't think so.
- 15y ago