Wikipedia:SOPA initiative/Ideas


 * Already, many of members of Congress are asking for public input around the issue. We are paying close attention to those opportunities, as well as to public input to the Administration.

'''"Washington needs to hear your best ideas about how to clamp down on rogue websites and other criminals who make money off the creative efforts of American artists and rights holders. We should all be committed to working with all interested constituencies to develop new legal tools to protect global intellectual property rights without jeopardizing the openness of the Internet. Our hope is that you will bring enthusiasm and know-how to this important challenge."

- Official White House Response to Petitions '''

Best and brightest
I have been here only a short while, but have been dumbfounded at the levels of genius here at Wikipedia. It is a melting pot of the brightest minds in the World. Please take the time to spell out your thoughts on what would make any Legislation that intended to combat online piracy something that would work without harm. I know you have the knowledge to do what Lawmakers have not been able to do. Please share that knowledge. Respectfully, Petersontinam (talk) 01:58, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

Good to see Wikipedia showing its muscle, I think we should post the bill and edit it wikipedia style to more acceptable language.--Meistromaster (talk) 19:42, 19 January 2012 (UTC)
 * See Below, OPEN Act. A Bipartisan alternative to SOPA and PIPA, introduced on January 18, 2012, and a copy able to be edited, Wikipedia style, at keepthewebopen. Petersontinam (talk) 22:39, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

Suggestions
As an immediate programme: 1. Remove property protection from intellectual expressions, patents, creative works and the like, allowing for freedom to duplicate works or re-use works in any form not licensed below; 2. Introduce a right to be identified as the author of nominated work, and to have the ability to licence (without fee, or right to decline reproduction) works to reproduced invariant, for currently living natural persons as sole authors only during the term of their life; 3. Introduce a universal social wage.
 * Compromise with content rightsholders by lowering term length is more workable. Selery (talk) 16:25, 19 January 2012 (UTC)
 * When I'm advocating these, I'm thinking in terms of myself as an encyclopaedia editor, not as a "maker of sausages" as the process of politics is described. "No Copyright" is an excellent position to begin from, to be able to retreat to "Repeal of the Sonny Bono Copyright Extension Act" or "Reduction of US copyright period to 15 years."  Demands need to be strident, it is part of the process of compromise, you need to have something to sell-out.  This is also an excellent position to hold, while accepting limited gains such as a potential dramatic and universal extension of free use for educational, academic and not-for-profit purposes. Fifelfoo (talk) 03:04, 20 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Support Remove the "Property" label from any and all sources of published "Knowledge". So that once someone buys a copy of creative work/idea they should be able to share it with their family and friends, including over the internet. --Ne0 (talk) 06:46, 23 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Support indexing federal minimum wage to local cost of living. Selery (talk) 16:25, 19 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Unfortunately minimum wages aren't identical to social wages. For example: a minimum wage is often below the standard of living deemed minimal in society, and forces individuals into interdependent relationships.  A social wage is a straightforward (not complexified by charity and multiple competing social welfare systems) methods of paying everyone that works enough to live on, and paying all those that don't work exactly the same.  Again, this is an excellent position to advocate when we're a volunteer run organisation (every person in US territory could be a "paid" editor :).  On the other hand it is more difficult for us to "retreat" from this demand, as we have much less muscle in terms of social renumeration than we do in terms of copyright abolition. Fifelfoo (talk) 03:04, 20 January 2012 (UTC)
 * The harm of property restrictions, especially those in the possession of unnatural persons, would be removed from the generation of human culture (a common good), and the introduction of a social wage would allow for creators of intellectual expressions to subsist at the level of all other members of society while producing. (This proposal largely borrowed from Wages for housework). Fifelfoo (talk) 03:54, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

4. Institute public campaign finance with a constitutional amendment to get lobbyist money influence out of politics. Selery (talk) 04:13, 18 January 2012 (UTC) Raise congressional salaries to $10 million per year. Seriously. 67.6.133.90 (talk) 06:26, 19 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Oppose - that would only fund incumbents, instead of placing candidates on a level playing field without regard to contributions, as exclusive public campaign finance would. Selery (talk) 16:25, 19 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Good point; withdrawn. How about $10 million to the top two contenders six months before the election? Please discuss at Reference_desk/Humanities 67.6.133.90 (talk) 17:39, 19 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Support very successful democracies such as Canada, Germany, Japan, and Sweden essentially do this, and the mass media which stands to benefit from the advertisements from that money will clearly be in favor, making it easy to accomplish. Selery (talk) 18:37, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

5. My Nephew has a good idea. While in office, any public official, elected that is, gets a salary say, 2 or 3 times minimum wage, and on the expiration of the term, the public votes on how much MORE money, that elected official is to be paid. This incentivizes elected office holders to work FOR the people, for MOST of the people, and to Communicate to people what is being done... because their pay could potentially be quite high, if they do outstandingly good work. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.49.67.104 (talk • contribs)

6. Research and experience have shown that preventing monetization is an effective strategy against cyber crime. That should be the focus of new legislation.

7. People don't want web sites taken offline, as that tactic could be abused to stifle whistleblowers, competitors, or free speech.
 * Points at Justice.gov. People don't want websites they like taken offline. People, in fact, act in extreme opposition against anything they deem censorship (digg hddvd day.) People, in fact, upload child pornography to youtube (SOPA Hearing.) The fear of being taken offline puts pressure both on the site owner, and the user.
 * If users are accustom to uploading infringing videos to youtube, (and even complaining when things such as full movies are taken down) why should being informed of the legalities stop them? But if their actions had consequences, if uploading that video could cause youtube to go away forever... perhaps, just perhaps, they might think twice.
 * And in the Megaupload scandal, where they admit to knowing, and promoting, piracy for profits. Maybe the fear of being shut down and assets seized would make them actually comply with DMCA instead of hiding behind it's provisions.
 * Of course, maybe none of this will happen, in which case the government will have a tool to block traffic rather than negotiate with other governments and convict the criminals (under a law they aren't held by).
 * But let's say that the law is too open for abuse, could we not establish a committee to review the shutdowns, have a public forum to petition overriding shutdowns, or otherwise improve the system?

8. Any enforcement action must permit the accused a full and fair hearing. There can be no penalties applied based upon an accusation alone.
 * There needs be a history of complaints before the SOPA takes effect, and the webmaster has a period of 10 days to file a counter motion against it.
 * Even then, this should not be a legal matter but something decided by a small committee. Judges and Juries are uneducated and easily manipulated. A group that understands the technology, can rationally decide if the prior evidence presents motive, and is unswayed by rich lawyer "fancy talk" would benefit small companies that can't compete against large corporations.
 * The requirement for full trial before penalty does create a bureaucratic problem. If a webpage is undeniably hosting (or directing to) pirated material on a regular basis then court proceedings could keep it open for months. Let's say it's a child pornography site rather than an MP3 site... You would admit that leaving such a site up is damaging.
 * While we can understand that abuse of the system can cause massive damage, inaction can cause problems as well. Rather, a very stern punishment should be in place for abuse... even if it means dismantling the company that issued the false claim.

9. Web site operators acting in good faith must not be sanctioned for occasional bad behavior by their sites' users. The DMCA's safe harbor provision must be reaffirmed.
 * The DMCA's harbour still exists, but it is significantly smaller.
 * If you setup a forum and then never check it for a year, you'd be protected by DMCA (without SOPA). This means that if your forum (that you weren't paying attention to) turned into an all out piracy forum, you'd be protected by DMCA because you had no prior knowledge.
 * SOPA basically says that you should try to know what your users are doing. Not that you're guilty of every little crime they commit, but that the "blind eye loophole" won't work anymore.
 * Removing the "blind eye loophole" from the DMCA's safe harbour greatly hinders American Companies that use the DMCA as a shield against their illegal activities.

10. Litigation must not be vexatious. The powerful and rich may not inundate the weak with lawsuits.
 * This actually isn't a problem with SOPA, but rather a bigger problem with our legal system. Those who do not understand the law may be bullied into complying with "patent trolls". Saying that you have a patent that is so broad that any court would throw it out, but is enough to threaten a small company into giving you money is something that occurs in this day and age.
 * Rather than attack legislation for giving companies new tools to extort smaller companies, we should focus on mandating legal training in public schools. I am not well versed in law and it is possible that I too could be a victim of a person who makes similar claims... but if we spent less time dwelling on the past or the problems of other countries and more time preparing our children for the realty that exists today. We could, perhaps, prevent such exploitation.
 * To reiterate. The problem isn't the law, it's those who do not understand the law. If there are harsh punishments for filing a false report then "threatening messages" is all other companies can do. But if a buisness is threatened by a rich business, they have a legal right to bring them to court over many number of things (failure to report a crime (if the smaller business was actually committing one), extortion, threats, idk...
 * Instead of trying to remove the possibility of abuse, we should attack the source. People don't understand the legal system and when pressed against someone who says they can shut them down if they don't "pay a fee" well... what that person is doing can easily be brought to court but fear and poor understanding prevents these people from seeking justice.

11. Blocking parts of the Internet itself is useless. A second 'Darknet' will emerge almost immediately.
 * Not actually a suggestion. But you should realize that even if your darknet forms, it is entirely possible the government can find a way to severely disrupt the network. Then, without the darknet, and with a heavily monitored internet, where will you learn where to get your warez?
 * At best, this is good information control. The pirates may talk about bypassing it, and there are many ways to do so. The problem is that accessing the darknet requires using the internet (or phone lines XD)... and hence, once the government know of it, they can make motions to disrupt or otherwise destroy it.

12. Where any immediate action (i.e. a block of access or funds) is possible, a false reporting would have to be a felony, with heavy penalties.
 * Excellent point Petersontinam (talk) 20:31, 17 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Whatever happened to "under penalty of perjury"? -- Bk314159 (Talk to me and find out what I've done) 01:26, 18 January 2012 (UTC)

13. Don't use the 'Free Internet for Iran"-drum when you really mean to use the 'Free speech for Iran'-drum. It's confusing, dumb and dishonest.

14. The big danger of these bills has always been: It will not burden those who pirate, but it will burden anyone who has something to say that another person doesn't like.
 * Anonymous "We don't like you saying SOPA is good."
 * Though if we do establish harsh penalties (including the dismantling of a company) for even a single false report, we can easily mitigate this complaint. With a committee of well educated and well versed individuals in internet technologies, they can decide if any wrong was done at all.
 * Of course, said committee has no legal say over the company, just over if the block is approved or removed.

15. Stop wasting money on developing Iran/China firewall circumvention methods, when you want to build your own firewall. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jehochman (talk • contribs)

16. Remove anyone who does not stand to benefit from decreased piracy from the "opposition" of a bill unless specifically affected by the measures employed by the bill. 17. Only allow people who will actually be affected by the bill attach their name in protest
 * This is simply to note that while some companies fear attacks by cyber-criminal groups (such as Anonymous, which can be a greater threat to free speech). Or consumer backlash, though said consumers aren't well versed in the legalities at play... there are still a large number of companies protesting the bill that have nothing to lose from online-piracy. This essentially means that while the currently proposed law protects a few corporation's interests; there is an utter indifference towards those corporations by those who are protesting against the bill.
 * We could therefore say that people with disabilities (representing a small minority) shouldn't have their fair say in court at the expense of the taxpayer.
 * As said before, there have been cyber-attacks against well named companies who supported the bill... and the list of people in protest tends to grow. The claims are they're in protest because it affects freedom of speech (Yes, the freedom to side with SOPA, Anonymous). But that's a clear umbrella for an ulterior motive.
 * It's more than that. It cramps civil liberty and skips due process of the law. You don't have to have exercised a liberty in order to lose that liberty. SOPA and others would set a legal precedent for means being justified by ends; specifically, those means are the bypassing of due process. This affects everyone. People should be allowed to act in defense of themselves, their children, and those that follow them by preventing laws like this from happening. Rawberrysmoothie (talk) 02:47, 22 January 2012 (UTC)
 * We should know EXACTLY why any of these companies oppose a given legislation. These reasons CANNOT be touted as fact unless accredited. And should be specific and address a correctable problem. Stating that the legislation is irreparable is against the wikipedian code (Act in Good Faith, correct mistakes but don't revert).
 * Wikipedia does not run the government, Google does not run the government. WE DO. And if they're going to use their power to influence our politics, we should know EXACTLY what they REALLY are after. Not "We're freedom fighters", not "We believe in democracy" but the truth behind the mask. Let the dirty side show its face. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.171.224.117 (talk • contribs)

18. Implement a low-cost Knowledge sharing liscence for every Knowledge-able product
 * this is an alternative to #1. It will be a non-transferable license to share Intelectual property. Every copyrighted/patented work would have a sharing license. In Individual holding this liscence can share that copyrighted/patented work with whoever and where-ever he/she wants.(example: file-sharing blog). A website holding this liscence will legaly enable sharing that copyrighted/patented work with its visitors and among its visitors.(example: Torrent-tracker website) This will promote the flow of knowledge without risking the author's lively-hood --Ne0 (talk) 07:10, 23 January 2012 (UTC)

What not to do: examples of copyright enforcement abuses

 * Posterchild for Opposition to SOPA and PIPA: dajaz1Feds Falsely accuse and deny all due process:dajaz1


 * Canadian receives death sentence from Iran court

Two extreme cases of "no due process"...One already happened in US involving ICE, and one is a situation that we never, ever want to come close to. Petersontinam (talk) 07:40, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

"OPEN" Act: Online participation
Open Act online editing Alternative legislation proposed January 18, 2012 by a bipartisan group of senators. California Republican Darrell Issa introduced OPEN in the House., and also a Senate version was introduced. On "keepthewebopen", it can be edited in a way similar to Wikipedia. Petersontinam (talk) 22:34, 19 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Oppose - the entertainment industry is already making record profits, and yesterday's Supreme Court decision allowing retraction of the public domain to rights holders and today's action against Megaupload proves that the rightsholders lobby does not need additional ex parte remedies of any kind. Selery (talk) 23:35, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

What exactly are the differences between current law and proposed legislation?
According to this recent news story- FBI Shuts Down Megaupload.com for Piracy- US Officials are able to fight Online Piracy with the tools and laws already in place. Would one difference be that with SOPA and PIPA, they can fast track around actual investigation before arrests or shutting a website down? Comments or information on clear differences between existing laws and proposed legislation would be appreciated. Petersontinam (talk) 17:07, 20 January 2012 (UTC)
 * The government was able to seize that domain because it's based on the U.S. SOPA and PIPA seek to give both private companies and the DOJ vastly more powers.  For example, a private ISP could unilaterally (without any trial or court order) decide another site (even if that happens to be a competitor) infringes and block their domain name.  They would then receive immunity as long as they can claim this action was made in good faith.  The government would also be able to order an ISP to censor a site's DNS, a search engine to censor links, or payment or ad providers to stop doing business with a site, based on an allegation of infringement.  The site would then have to fight those rulings after the fact.  Further, once this censorship regime is in place, it will likely be used for other purposes.


 * The provision about an "Internet site is dedicated to theft of U.S. property" weakens the DMCA safe harbor provision. I believe this applies to all sites, foreign and domestic.


 * The anti-circumvention provision means sites could immediately be sued for distributing (or probably even linking to) well known tools that provide an alternate way to navigate on the Internet. This even includes anti-censorship tools funded by the government, like Tor.


 * I encourage you to read the law and the EFF summary. Superm401 - Talk 05:17, 22 January 2012 (UTC)


 * The proposed legislation is an example, in part, of the U.S. attempting to apply its laws extraterritorially. Taroaldo (talk) 09:44, 22 January 2012 (UTC)
 * a private ISP could unilaterally (without any trial or court order) decide another site (even if that happens to be a competitor) infringes and block their domain name. Of course you'll have a reference for that claim that is based in law, or at least by using the words in SOPA/PIPA and not just some mindless internet meme. Also you will be able to explain how the following words in SOPA are overriden:
 * and where it says that a doesn't need a court order, especially when the act says "in accordance with rule 65 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure", "A process server on behalf of the Attorney General, with prior approval of the court". John lilburne (talk) 20:44, 22 January 2012 (UTC)
 * I think the concern was more that the order could issue ex parte with the offending site, sites that link to it, index it, or process payments for it, all never knowing about the proceedings until after the judge signs the order. It's worth noting that laws establishing ex parte proceedings are sometimes found unconstitutional because of incompatibility with the due process clause and sometimes the equal protection clause, but they stand more often than not. Selery (talk) 01:51, 23 January 2012 (UTC)
 * John, the relevant provision is section 104, "IMMUNITY FOR TAKING VOLUNTARY ACTION AGAINST SITES DEDICATED TO THEFT OF U.S. PROPERTY.":
 * As you can see, it talks about acting "voluntarily", and does not say the Attorney General is involved in the voluntary action in any way.  As I said, they do have to be able to argue that the takedown was made in good faith (statute uses "reasonable belief").  But it's still a private party making the decision, and the burden of proving non-reasonable belief rests on the site that is already down. Superm401 - Talk 22:39, 27 January 2012 (UTC)
 * The key being reasonable belief which has a legal definition. What it doesn't say is that an ISP can cause a competitor ISP to disappear from the intertubes. Simply that if if it does not wish to do business with some company, nor carry its traffic, based on the reasonable belief that it is a seller of counterfeit or pirated goods then I can do so. Which is pretty much the same as an ISP or hosting site ban-hammering a website that is receiving a shed load of takedown requests, or is generating a number of spam abuse complaints. In addition it is not immune if a reasonable person carrying out due diligence would not reach such a conclusion. IOW the bandying about of sec 104 is internet FUD spread by what some have called paid Google shills. John lilburne (talk) 00:36, 28 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Reasonable belief does have a legal definition, but it's not a very demanding standard. But you're wrong if you think it can't be used to remove a site from the internet.  I never said a competitor ISP, just a competitor, which might be e.g. a media company in the case of Comcast (which is both media company and ISP).  Either disabling a site's DNS or cutting off their funding are effectively removing it from the net.  Like I said, at that point the taken down site (which could be a competitor, since there are no limits in that regard) is fighting uphill to prove non-reasonable belief and bring their site back. Superm401 - Talk 00:18, 30 January 2012 (UTC)
 * The key being reasonable belief which has a legal definition. What it doesn't say is that an ISP can cause a competitor ISP to disappear from the intertubes. Simply that if if it does not wish to do business with some company, nor carry its traffic, based on the reasonable belief that it is a seller of counterfeit or pirated goods then I can do so. Which is pretty much the same as an ISP or hosting site ban-hammering a website that is receiving a shed load of takedown requests, or is generating a number of spam abuse complaints. In addition it is not immune if a reasonable person carrying out due diligence would not reach such a conclusion. IOW the bandying about of sec 104 is internet FUD spread by what some have called paid Google shills. John lilburne (talk) 00:36, 28 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Reasonable belief does have a legal definition, but it's not a very demanding standard. But you're wrong if you think it can't be used to remove a site from the internet.  I never said a competitor ISP, just a competitor, which might be e.g. a media company in the case of Comcast (which is both media company and ISP).  Either disabling a site's DNS or cutting off their funding are effectively removing it from the net.  Like I said, at that point the taken down site (which could be a competitor, since there are no limits in that regard) is fighting uphill to prove non-reasonable belief and bring their site back. Superm401 - Talk 00:18, 30 January 2012 (UTC)

Proposal: Constitutional Amendments Referenda Act of 2012
https://sites.google.com/site/amendmentact/

Please support these referenda for amendments to the United States Constitution by calling your senators and congressperson today and asking them to cosponsor this bill.

Short URL: j.mp/amendmentact


 * Contents

Bill text

Discussion

(1) Overturn Citizens United (2) Tax donations to super PACs at 99% (3) Eliminate gerrymandering (4) Prohibit political advertisements (5) Fund voting precincts in proportion to their population (6) Abolish the electoral college (7) Eliminate the first-past-the-post spoiler effect (8) Two bracket income tax only (9) Energy and climate security (10) Free reading tutoring systems (11) Single payer universal health care (12) End racism in criminal justice (13) Equal rights (14) Eliminate prohibition (15) Ratify the Convention on the Rights of the Child (16) Abolish the death penalty (17) Abolish asset forfeiture except as approved by a jury (18) Abolish victimless crimes and blue laws (19) Limit restriction of the voting rights of criminals (20) Forbid interest on excess reserves

Announcements

Recent site activity

137 days until Election Day


 * A BILL

To amend chapter 20 of title 42, United States Code, to hold referenda to direct Congress to amend the Constitution to prevent unlimited anonymous foreign money contributions from influencing United States politics, and to otherwise insure electoral, financial, energy, climate, educational, and health security, and for other purposes.

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled,

SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.

This Act may be cited as the Constitutional Amendments Referenda Act of 2012.

SECTION. 2. CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT REFERENDA.

Chapter 20 of title 42, United States Code, is amended by inserting the following:

SUBCHAPTER III—CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT REFERENDA (§1974f).

1974f. All States shall include on the November, 2012 general election ballots the following separate referenda to mandate that each State's senators and congressional representatives shall be instructed and required to the fullest extent of the law to support, agendize, and immediately vote in favor of—and that each State's legislators shall be instructed and required to the fullest extent of the law to immediately ratify—amendments to the United States Constitution to immediately:

(1) Overturn the decision of the Supreme Court in Citizens United v. FEC (2010) by amending the Constitution to include the following:

Section 1. To secure the independence of the legislature and executive, the Congress shall:

(a) publicly fund federal elections with at least the equivalent of the total amount spent in the election cycle when this article is ratified;

(b) limit any non-anonymized contributions to candidates for federal office to the equivalent of $100; and

(c) have the power to limit, but not ban, independent political expenditures within 90 days of an election, including but not limited to spending in support of, or in opposition to, a candidate for federal office.

Section 2. The First Amendment shall not be construed to limit legislation enacted pursuant to this article, except to assure neutrality of content and viewpoints. Neither shall the First Amendment be construed to limit the equivalent power of state or local legislation enacted to regulate state or local elections. Nor shall the First Amendment be construed to vest any unalienable constitutional rights in any non-natural person.

Section 3. The Congress shall establish an agency for federal elections to enforce the provisions of this article, whose principal officers shall be non-partisan commissioners who have served as federal judges at least ten years. The agency shall have standing to enforce this article in the federal courts, including in actions against Congress.

Section 4. The Congress may enforce the provisions of this article by legislation;

(2) Require that political contributions to super PACs be taxed at the rate of 99%;

(3) Require that all congressional districts be redrawn once in 2013 and after each subsequent census such that they are more compact and more contentious instead of safe for the major political parties, and such that there shall be minimal overlap between districts for State assemblies, State senates and Congress;

(4) Prohibit all political advertisements in accordance with the regulations in effect in Denmark at the time http://www.campaignsandelections.com/campaign-insider/258767/what-us-politicos-can-learn-from-denmark.thtml was written;

(5) Fund all voting precinct equipment, training, and staff in proportion to the population of those precincts in order to eliminate voters discouraged by long lines in poor neighborhoods;

(6) Abolish the electoral college and replace it with direct popular election by instant-runoff voting;

(7) Mandate that the single transferrable vote (such as instant-runoff voting for single seats) or contingent vote systems be required in all elections, unless such elections are to establish a numerical value, in which case the median value of the voters shall be required;

(8) Abolish all property and sales taxes, replacing them with income and capital gains taxation based on two brackets, where the bottom bracket shall be taxed at 0% and the top bracket shall be set by the Congress at a cusp and rate which shall balance the United States budget, except that a lower rate shall apply to capital gains from securities held more than five years;

(9) Forbid subsidy of fossil fuels, subsidize domestic and foreign renewable energy to the extent necessary to minimize total economic damage from extreme weather, and require the Secretary of Energy to commercialize the mass production of carbon neutral synthetic transportation fuel from carbonic acid in seawater;

(10) Require the Secretary of Education to provide reading tutoring systems based on pronunciation assessment using speech recognition for free to all on the internet by web and mobile device stand-alone systems;

(11) Establish a single-payer national universal health care system;

(12) Require that prosecutorial decisions to charge criminal defendants with crimes involving mandatory minimum sentences conform in proportion to the national population by race in aggregate—see e.g. http://newsone.com/1859475/black-people-receive-60-longer-sentences-for-same-crimes ;

(13) Provide that equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex or sexual orientation;

(14) Abolish the prohibition of any drug which is not conclusively known to be more harmful than alcohol;

(15) Ratify the Convention on the Rights of the Child and its protocols without reservation;

(16) Abolish the death penalty;

(17) Abolish asset forfeiture, except as approved by a jury;

(18) Abolish victimless crimes, blue laws, and religious proscriptions;

(19) Forbid restriction of the voting rights of criminals unless they are incarcerated or escaped; and

(20) Abolish payment of interest on excess reserve balances.

SECTION 3. EFFECTIVE DATE.

This Act (including the amendments to the United States Code made by this Act) shall take effect upon enactment of this Act.

— END —

71.212.226.91 (talk) 20:01, 24 June 2012 (UTC)

United4thePeople.org
http://united4thepeople.org is of likely interest here. 71.212.249.178 (talk) 05:23, 14 July 2012 (UTC)