Hacking Politics: How Geeks, Progressives, the Tea Party, Gamers, Anarchists, and Suits Teamed Up to Defeat SOPA and Save the Internet by and David Moon Patrick Ruffini David Segal Page B
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stories need human stakes.
Jonny 5 (lead vocals, the Flobots)
In the winter of 2011 when my friend David Segal approached me about creating a YouTube video in opposition to SOPA, I knew it must be the right thing to do, because I trust David to be on the right side of things. I knew that, despite the hanging questions for artists as to how we will survive the transforming music industry, the answer would never resemble the heartless clampdown on fans proposed by SOPA. I knew that fans covering our songs at school talent shows and using our music as a soundtrack to personal slideshows deserve our gratitude, not legal action.
Patrick Ruffini
Issa’s crafty and resourceful social media team had set up a website, KeeptheWebOpen.com , initially to showcase their government transparency initiatives (including a platform called MADISON allowing wiki-style edits to legislation), that would be used as a platform to live-stream the hearings. A core of opposition quickly formed around Issa (himself a senior Republican and chairman of the Government Oversight committee), Lofgren, Polis, and Republican Jason Chaffetz of Utah.
Elizabeth Stark
You know that old slogan from Texas? Don’t mess with Texas. Well, some of us wanted to make sure Lamar Smith, the congressman from Texas who proposed SOPA, heard our version of the slogan: don’t mess with the Internet. A group of us, led by reddit cofounder Alexis Ohanian, started a crowd-funding effort that turned the slogan into a billboard in Lamar’s Texas district.
Andrew McDiarmid
During the pivotal committee markup in mid-December, the analyses regarding cybersecurity—the whitepaper, the Sandia letter, the op-eds by Stewart Baker, a new EFF-organized letter signed by eighty-three Internet engineers—were cited repeatedly by Reps. Lofgren, Issa, Chaffetz, Polis, and the other SOPA skeptics as they criticized the bill. Rep. Chaffetz memorably chided his colleagues, “We’re going to do surgery on the Internet … without bringing in the doctors. To my colleagues I would say, if you don’t know what DNSSEC is, you don’t know what you’re doing” with this legislation.
Patrick Ruffini
The first sign that the opposition would not go down without a fight came with a relatively simple procedural motion: they forced a full reading of the bill before the committee—a process which would take more than an hour at the outset of the proceedings. This delay set the tone for the next two days and was set against the backdrop of an impending recess and Congress rushing to tie up loose ends before heading home for the holidays.
Zoe Lofgren
We had prepared well over one hundred substantive amendments to SOPA, to be offered by a bipartisan group of Members. We started the markup at 10:00 a.m. and by the time the Committee recessed twelve hours later around 10: 00 p.m., we hadn’t reached all of the amendments that needed to be offered.
Patrick Ruffini
The opposition on the committee planned to offer as many amendments as possible. Democratic Rep. Jared Polis, an avid gamer and the only Internet entrepreneur in Congress, planned to force the committee to vote yea or nay on barring federal funds being used to benefit pornographers—who were some of the most aggressive copyright litigators. Rep. Zoe Lofgren, a Democrat from northern California, would ask movie theater owners to participate in SOPA’s rigid enforcement mechanisms; after all, movie theaters were themselves intermediaries for movie piracy, with “users” making bootleg recordings. Why not hold them accountable like you would the owners a website with millions of users, some of whom traffic in pirated content? In total, fifty-five amendments would be submitted.
Larry Downes
In Washington, the accepted wisdom by year-end was that the technology industry had matured at last into a lobbying force commensurate with its size and pocketbook. But what everyone missed was that the users had opened a third front in this fight, and
Jonny 5 (lead vocals, the Flobots)
In the winter of 2011 when my friend David Segal approached me about creating a YouTube video in opposition to SOPA, I knew it must be the right thing to do, because I trust David to be on the right side of things. I knew that, despite the hanging questions for artists as to how we will survive the transforming music industry, the answer would never resemble the heartless clampdown on fans proposed by SOPA. I knew that fans covering our songs at school talent shows and using our music as a soundtrack to personal slideshows deserve our gratitude, not legal action.
Patrick Ruffini
Issa’s crafty and resourceful social media team had set up a website, KeeptheWebOpen.com , initially to showcase their government transparency initiatives (including a platform called MADISON allowing wiki-style edits to legislation), that would be used as a platform to live-stream the hearings. A core of opposition quickly formed around Issa (himself a senior Republican and chairman of the Government Oversight committee), Lofgren, Polis, and Republican Jason Chaffetz of Utah.
Elizabeth Stark
You know that old slogan from Texas? Don’t mess with Texas. Well, some of us wanted to make sure Lamar Smith, the congressman from Texas who proposed SOPA, heard our version of the slogan: don’t mess with the Internet. A group of us, led by reddit cofounder Alexis Ohanian, started a crowd-funding effort that turned the slogan into a billboard in Lamar’s Texas district.
Andrew McDiarmid
During the pivotal committee markup in mid-December, the analyses regarding cybersecurity—the whitepaper, the Sandia letter, the op-eds by Stewart Baker, a new EFF-organized letter signed by eighty-three Internet engineers—were cited repeatedly by Reps. Lofgren, Issa, Chaffetz, Polis, and the other SOPA skeptics as they criticized the bill. Rep. Chaffetz memorably chided his colleagues, “We’re going to do surgery on the Internet … without bringing in the doctors. To my colleagues I would say, if you don’t know what DNSSEC is, you don’t know what you’re doing” with this legislation.
Patrick Ruffini
The first sign that the opposition would not go down without a fight came with a relatively simple procedural motion: they forced a full reading of the bill before the committee—a process which would take more than an hour at the outset of the proceedings. This delay set the tone for the next two days and was set against the backdrop of an impending recess and Congress rushing to tie up loose ends before heading home for the holidays.
Zoe Lofgren
We had prepared well over one hundred substantive amendments to SOPA, to be offered by a bipartisan group of Members. We started the markup at 10:00 a.m. and by the time the Committee recessed twelve hours later around 10: 00 p.m., we hadn’t reached all of the amendments that needed to be offered.
Patrick Ruffini
The opposition on the committee planned to offer as many amendments as possible. Democratic Rep. Jared Polis, an avid gamer and the only Internet entrepreneur in Congress, planned to force the committee to vote yea or nay on barring federal funds being used to benefit pornographers—who were some of the most aggressive copyright litigators. Rep. Zoe Lofgren, a Democrat from northern California, would ask movie theater owners to participate in SOPA’s rigid enforcement mechanisms; after all, movie theaters were themselves intermediaries for movie piracy, with “users” making bootleg recordings. Why not hold them accountable like you would the owners a website with millions of users, some of whom traffic in pirated content? In total, fifty-five amendments would be submitted.
Larry Downes
In Washington, the accepted wisdom by year-end was that the technology industry had matured at last into a lobbying force commensurate with its size and pocketbook. But what everyone missed was that the users had opened a third front in this fight, and
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