Here is my letter to Feinstein, I have some comments at the end. Feel free to comment on your own! I would appreciate it as I haven't yet sent my letter.

----------------------

Dear Senator Dianne Feinstein,

I would like to express my opposition to the Consumer Broadband and Digital Television Promotion Act (S. 2048) introduced by Senator Hollings (D-South Carolina). I am 17 years old, studying in high school and currently working at a high-tech company in the heart of Silicon Valley, and will be your constituent before your next election. I understand you have co-sponsored this bill, which deeply disappoints me as a California citizen in the technology sector. This bill assumes that all computer-owning citizens are criminals. This is anti-freedom and anti-American in every sense of the words and I find this legislation to be a personal insult as it implies that I cannot hold myself in check without some technological provisions. Many machines have illegal uses (such as cars or baseball bats) but the legal uses of those far outweigh the illegal uses. Computers should be no different.

There are a couple of points of which you should be aware. 1) This legislation will impose nearly impossible challenges and severely curtail the development of the technology sector for the benefit of the copyright-control industry, which is only one-tenth the size. 2) Twenty years ago the issues of audiocassettes and VCRs, which were supposedly going to kill the industry through widespread piracy, have not. They now use those mediums in the multi-billion dollar industry of renting and buying of content for home viewing. This legislation is a similar overreaction to a new medium of content--the Internet. 3) This legislation impacts the less fortunate who may not be able to afford DRM-equipped digital devices, further widening the "digital divide." 4) As of yet, the copyright-control industry has shown no interest in using the laws already on the books to bring charges against the millions of people breaking the law on a daily basis. 5) If all industries worked like the copyright-control industry, one could argue that a speed cap of 70m.p.h. must be placed on all cars imported into California because otherwise there exists the potential to drive too fast. Similarly, we cannot "turn back the clock" and cripple the modern computer because there exists the potential to break copyright law.

Nowhere in the constitution does it say, "Congress shall protect the rights of companies to secure a profit." This legislation is simply about protecting the profits of the content-control industry. Technology is changing. They must adapt their business model, not lobby Congress to legislate their profits for them. This law is economically unfeasible, inconvenient, will stifle innovation and scholarly work, and if signed into law will not be supported by your constituents, even those in non-technology industries. Please take to heart the fact that you are putting the pleading of an industry above this country's constitutional contract with its own people by co-sponsoring this bill. You received US$211,638 in direct contributions from the content industries and the democrats received over US$10million in soft money contributions. Though I doubt it is politically feasible, I ask you to withdraw your sponsorship of this bill. If you vote yes on this bill, I will assume you have fallen prey to the large donations you have received from the corporate proponents of this bill. If this is the case, then I know that you are no longer working for your constituents or the common man, but for big business, and I will not vote for you in either the primaries or the senator election in 2006.

------------

Credit goes out to all the slashdotters who put comments on the relevant stories. I took lots and lots of ideas from you guys and put them into this letter. Thanks everyone!