I hang my hat at Tumblr
“At Sundance, Weinstein Co.’s Bob Weinstein got a first-hand taste of the challenge facing the studios when a technician fixing a television set in his hotel room recommended the film “Apollo 18.” Mr. Weinstein, whose company distributed the film, says he was thrilled—until the man added that he had downloaded a free copy and could do the same for Mr. Weinstein within 20 minutes. “That’s my movie!” Mr. Weinstein says he exclaimed. “You’re arrested!”
Attention, Wall Street Journal archivists: Please file this anecdote under “Things that probably didn’t happen.”
Two days ago, you guys stepped up once again to show the world just how much we care about protecting the Internet. Together, we generated more than 140,000 calls to Senators, spent more than 4,200 hours on the phone with their staffers, and blacked out 650,000 of our blogs to make our point and inspire others to get involved. And what’s more, this was on top of the 90,000 calls we sent to members of the House of Representatives a month ago. Incredible.
It’s now becoming clear just how much impact our action is having. On January 18th, only 31 members of Congress opposed these bills. Just one day later, 101 members of Congress publicly stood with us in opposition. We are being heard.
And as of today, it looks like both the Senate PIPA and House SOPA bills have been shelved, for the moment. It seems pretty likely that the bills won’t pass as written—a big first win. We now hope that Internet companies, the creative community and the content industry join together to innovate and devise new partnerships to combat online piracy. We’re confident there are effective ways to do this without damaging the Internet or diminishing our freedoms.
You’ve made a big difference in keeping the Internet a safe and open place for creators. Thank you again.
“Many in the industry say the legislation began to stir suspicion as early as September, with respected venture capitalists like Fred Wilson and Paul Graham calling attention to it in e-mails and on the Web. But the cause gained visibility on Nov. 16 when Tumblr added a feature that “censored” the dashboard users see when they log into the site, and pointed them to information about the bills. The idea for the feature came out of a three-hour meeting the weekend before, organized by people who opposed the legislation, including members of Fight for the Future; Brad Burnham, a partner at Union Square Ventures; and David Segal, executive director for Demand Progress, a non-profit group. John Maloney, the president of Tumblr, said the company volunteered its offices in Manhattan for the meeting, which included roughly 40 people in the room and another 40 or so on speakerphone. Employees of well-known sites like Kickstarter and Reddit were there. “They told us why it was flawed and asked us to think about it as an industry and a group,” said Mr. Maloney, who added that David Karp, Tumblr’s founder, “was very quick to raise his hand and say ‘We’re in.’ ”
Nice piece from Jenna here:
Public Outcry Over Antipiracy Bills Began as Grass-Roots Grumbling - NYTimes.com
Excellent—can’t wait! (for those of you who don’t follow the senator’s Tumblr, it’s here)
“In the last few days, we have seen countless comments on various forms of social media and received many email messages, both pro and con on this issue. While the D’Addario family is committed to protecting its trademarks and family name, that commitment does not take priority over our respect for the U.S. Constitution and our right to free speech under the First Amendment.”
“MPAA has this traditional, old-school Washington presence, while Tumblr has no lobbying presence but a massive reach. They may not be Washington insiders, but they get their voice heard.”
—Mobile Commons head Jed Alpert, in a nice Forbes piece about how his company has been helping connect citizens to their Congressional representatives.
(The Company That Generated 400,000 Calls To Congress About SOPA - Forbes)
The Internet Blacklist vs. The Constitution
First, both bills would still result in the censoring of non-infringing speech. That is because they allow for the blocking of entire websites – even though the site may contain a great deal of perfectly legal speech. The Supreme Court has repeatedly affirmed, “broad prophylactic rules in the area of free expression are suspect … Precision of regulation must be the touchstone in an area so closely touching our most precious freedoms.” As Professor Laurence Tribe puts it, “The First Amendment requires that the government proceed with a scalpel – by prosecuting those who break the law – rather than with the sledgehammer approach of SOPA, which would silence speech across the board.” And if you think the government will at least be precise in choosing which sites to target (not that the Constitutional analysis turns on the government’s good intentions), recall the disgraceful treatment of some of the sites targeted by the government as part of “Operation In Our Sites.”
Second, the bills allow the government to obtain blocking orders without an adversary proceeding, which means that the right of U.S. citizens to receive information from abroad would be denied, without any real test of the merits of the infringement claim. To be clear, this process is unconstitutional even though the originators of the speech are outside of the United States (though, in some cases, the originators could be U.S. residents, e.g., folks posting comments on a foreign site’s forums), because the First Amendment protects our right to receive information as well as send it. Tribe points to a chilling parallel in a Supreme Court case which held that the Post Office could not keep a list of U.S. citizens receiving “communist political propaganda” (which, of course, intimidated those citizens from doing so) even though the “propagandists” were located abroad.
Third, as Professor Marvin Ammori notes, the bills would impermissibly regulate the speech of advertisers, search engines and DNS providers. Normally, similar blocking orders would require at a minimum, a finding that the actual speech in question (e.g., search results, which are protected as opinion, or truthful advertising) results in some irreparable harm. In addition, by allowing injunctions against tools that could be used to circumvent the blocking orders, SOPA could be used to target any number of sites that are merely providing technical information – including information desperately needed by human rights workers and political dissidents facing all-too similar censorship regimes abroad.
“In countries whose judicial systems are less independent and where legal defense for bloggers is rare, abuse of copyright law to stifle activism is much easier. The Russian government last year used a crackdown on software piracy as an excuse to confiscate activists’ computers. The Chinese government used copyright claims to crack down on critics of the 2008 Beijing Olympics who sometimes used modified images of the Olympic mascots in their critiques.
“In China ‘copyright’ is one of many excuses to crack down on political movements,” a Chinese blogger, Isaac Mao, told us. “If a new law like SOPA is introduced in the U.S., the Chinese government and official media will use it to support their version of ‘anti-piracy.’”
This, from the Cato institute, sums up the Libertarian case against SOPA nicely: “If this passes, the only difference between the U.S. and China is what’s on the blacklist.”
I Work For The Internet
So proud of this project, an accounting of all the amazing creative people and businesses who thrive because of an open Internet. These people are all threatened by the Stop Online Piracy Act currently making its way through a House committee; learn more, and see how you can help fight against this bill here.
