I do, actually, think that are organizations like the IDL and the EFF are misrepresenting this for attention, as it will ostensibly boost their donations. To b

I do, actually, think that are organizations like the IDL and the EFF are misrepresenting this for attention, as it will ostensibly boost their donations. To be fair, I also think this is the nature of the beast, and almost all advocacy groups do exactly this. I just think these groups, in this specific case, are doing it rather... severely, due to the tendency of the Internet community to react so viscerally towards any legislation that's in any way related to the Internet. When the government uses the word 'cyber' in their legislation proposals, Internet people tend to get nervous. They're playing on a lot of very legitimate fears that Washington doesn't understand the Internet and seeks to cause harm to its openness. Fears which I hold, to be clear, but not fears which are warranted in this particular case. They'd gain back a lot of my respect if they prominently focused on the bill's text rather than summaries without citations, and offered explicit amendments which would satisfy their issues. Of course the problem with this is that a great deal of what they're saying isn't citable (it's hard to cite factually dubious statements), and their complaints about the bill are nebulous and nonspecific, so I understand why their rhetoric is not focused on the bill's content (examples of this "the content of the bill doesn't matter, it's the precedent" argument can even be found in this very thread).