Stinger,
I would offer one suggestion for any future letters or to anyone else writing a letter to their senator or congressman. I would share as much detail as you can about your personal case and tell your story is if you're telling your friend trying to win them over. While I am all for including the links to websites as support for your claim you still need to give a detailed story an account of what is happened to you, why it is unjust and how it fits the definition of extortion.
I also highly recommend sending these letters to your Senator's and Congressman's local office not the Washington office. The Washington office is deluged with mail from all over while your local office will take more interest in dealing with a letter from a voter in that local district as they are local themselves. Again you want to write your letter in an effort to win over the letter recipient and make them want to pass it on to the next higher level. If you send them a letter saying this is wrong go research it at these websites for proof they generally have neither the time nor inclination to do this as I am sure their desk is covered with letters that must be opened and sorted and processed in their job is to do this as quickly and efficiently as possible.
You may receive one rejection or you may receive a lot of rejections you cannot let that discourage you and must continue to keep fighting and keep sending letters until someone takes notice. I promise you it does happen and you will see results. Just be diligent and keep plugging away at it.
I would offer one suggestion for any future letters or to anyone else writing a letter to their senator or congressman. I would share as much detail as you can about your personal case and tell your story is if you're telling your friend trying to win them over. While I am all for including the links to websites as support for your claim you still need to give a detailed story an account of what is happened to you, why it is unjust and how it fits the definition of extortion.
I also highly recommend sending these letters to your Senator's and Congressman's local office not the Washington office. The Washington office is deluged with mail from all over while your local office will take more interest in dealing with a letter from a voter in that local district as they are local themselves. Again you want to write your letter in an effort to win over the letter recipient and make them want to pass it on to the next higher level. If you send them a letter saying this is wrong go research it at these websites for proof they generally have neither the time nor inclination to do this as I am sure their desk is covered with letters that must be opened and sorted and processed in their job is to do this as quickly and efficiently as possible.
You may receive one rejection or you may receive a lot of rejections you cannot let that discourage you and must continue to keep fighting and keep sending letters until someone takes notice. I promise you it does happen and you will see results. Just be diligent and keep plugging away at it.
Just an update on my letter to my Congressman.
I walked into work this morning to find a message that someone from my Congressman's office had called on Friday regarding my letter. This got me excited. Could it be this easy?
Unfortunately, when I tracked her down, she had some difficulty remembering the Friday call. Then she came back with, "This office does not get involved in legal issues between companies."
I explained that I was not asking them to and that I could take care of my issues with Getty myself. I explained that my reason was to alert them to the fact that, in my opinion, this company was using copyright law to extort money from individuals and small businesses and that our legal leadership needed to do something about it. I pointed her to the web sites cited in my letter as proof that this was wide-spread.
Unfortunately, her response led me to only one conclusion. "Throw out the incumbent delegates from my state in favor of someone who MIGHT care."
I knew this was too good to be true. But it just means a longer fight. I do think a deluge of letters to Congressmen might move this up the priority ranks a bit. If anyone has the time and inclination, please help me take this message (in your own words) to Congress.