Hacking Politics: How Geeks, Progressives, the Tea Party, Gamers, Anarchists, and Suits Teamed Up to Defeat SOPA and Save the Internet

by David Segal, Patrick Ruffini

  My colleague, Congresswoman Anna Eshoo (D-CA), doesn’t serve on the Judiciary Committee, but she was eager to help in these efforts. She helped craft a letter to be sent to the Judiciary Committee and we set out to gather bipartisan signatures. Congressman Ron Paul (R-TX) was running for President and consequently was often away from the House. But I found him one evening while he was there for votes. I asked him to sign the letter and he took it saying he would “look at it.” I was terrifically pleased when a short time later he found me on the House floor to tell me he would sign. It was a good start to reaching across the political spectrum in building our opposition to SOPA.

  With the SOPA/PIPA freight train rolling through Congress on a fast track, we needed immediate action. Only a substantial public outcry could delay or stop this juggernaut. I huddled again with Representatives Eshoo and Polis and key tech advocates to organize opposition. In speeches, meetings and conference calls, I was telling Internet leaders and activists alike that the only way to derail SOPA/PIPA was to “melt the phone lines” with calls to Congress.

  Despite all the advances in connecting with representatives and senators, emails and online petitions just don’t get the same immediate attention from most Members of Congress that is created by a massive inpouring of phone calls. Petitions get noticed too, but elected officials know that a person who takes the time to call is also likely to take the time to walk into a voting booth.

  A few social network sites made an initial effort to generate to phone calls in opposition, but they fell short. There were not enough phone calls, and many calls were made to the district offices of Members of Congress—when policy staffs and Members were in Washington. Hardly anyone noticed.

  But the effort was getting attention from tech bloggers and some online media sources. Sites like Techdirt were covering the issue persistently. Cyber security experts were speaking out against SOPA. By the time I participated one November Saturday in a conference call organized by Mozilla, tech companies, non-profits, and grassroots groups were coalescing to use their platforms to organize calls to Congress. It was clear SOPA was being taken seriously as the threat it was. But would a large enough effort come in time?

  A “markup” of a bill is a time when the committee of jurisdiction meets to go through the bill, line by line, with Members of the Committee offering amendments. It is a formal proceeding, televised and now webcast. December 15, 2011 was the beginning of the Judiciary Committee “markup” of SOPA. Showtime.

  The week before, a small bipartisan group of Judiciary Committee Members had prepared amendments, but Chairman Smith redid the bill in a “manager’s amendment”—a complete rewrite—shortly before the markup. Working on the fly, my legislative counsel Ryan Clough had to pull an all-nighter to work through the subtleties of the new 71-page proposal to craft new amendments that were needed.

  Congress operates under long-standing rules, first created in the time of Thomas Jefferson and embodied even today in the book we consult on our rules, Jefferson’s Manual. One rule requires that bills and amendments be read aloud before they are acted on. This rule is almost always waived by “unanimous consent” to speed up proceedings. But when consent was requested to “waive the reading” of the 71-page manager’s amendment to SOPA, I objected and insisted that each word on every page of the new proposal be read aloud. After all, the public as well as the Committee Members needed time to consider Mr. Smith’s recent changes.

  We had prepared well over 100 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. The following day the House recessed for the year and Congress left town, so the Committee was unable to finish the markup and kicked it over to January.

  This was an important development for several reasons. First, I was later advised that over two hundred thousand people watched the telecast or webcast of the markup. Many who watched were apparently unimpressed by the arguments for the bill and by the apparent lack of Internet knowledge shown by some of the pro-SOPA Members of Congress. Second, the markup and amendment process helped to detail the failings of SOPA, from cyber-security to privacy to free speech. Finally, the delay gave time and opportunity to organize opposition among Internet users.

  Capitalizing on the extra time, I did an “Ask Me Anything” (AMA) on reddit.com on December 16, 2011. In this forum, a site which is favorite community for many of the Internet-savvy, I encouraged folks to contact their Members of Congress, and argued that SOPA was a grave threat to the Internet. I reassured the reddit community that, indeed, their representatives would listen to them if they spoke up.

  I had talked a lot about melting the phone lines, and using the Internet’s communication power to impact Congress. Now, Internet leaders emerged, and the idea of a blackout was considered. A group of sites decided to participate. Along with others, I began to lobby tech leaders to try to increase the size and effectiveness of the blackout. On Monday, January 16th Craigslist jumped the gun and used its platform to sound the alarm about SOPA. I emailed Craig Newmark to thank him and then emailed others in the tech world to urge that they join the cause. I was later told that in the two weeks prior to mid-January, SOPA was the number one news topic for Americans under age 30. Most Americans over age 30 had never heard of it.

  On January 18th, the Stop SOPA blackout occurred. An estimated seventy-five thousand websites went black in protest. I had my Congressional Web site go dark. Over one hundred sixty two million people were said to have viewed Wikipedia’s blacked out page. Google put a notice on its famous front page, with a click-through to scholarly analyses of the measures and an easy way to contact Members of Congress. The phone calls started to flood into Capitol Hill offices.

  All told, an estimated eight million Americans called their representatives and senators to voice their opposition to SOPA and PIPA. The phone meltdown had arrived. SOPA proponents seemed astonished that millions of Americans were calling Congress to oppose SOPA. Cosponsors of the bill started to remove their names from the bill. SOPA was done, although the proponents didn’t fully realize it for a few days.

  By January 23rd, the bills were officially killed when Chairman Lamar Smith announced the indefinite delay of the SOPA markup and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) pulled PIPA from the agenda in the Senate.

  Proponents had set out to run the freight train at high speed right through Congress, drowning out or marginalizing dissenting voices. They had not bargained for a group of Internet insurgents who tore up the tracks and took to the barricades. Their train had been derailed.

  What a wonderful thing: when millions of Americans spoke up, they were listened to. But was SOPA more than just a one-time victory? Was it a teachable moment? If so there may be at least three distinct lessons. The first lesson is about process, that when it comes to laws that will affect a free Internet, the days of major legislation being written through backroom deals, without meaningful public discussion, should be over.

  The second lesson is about the danger of being out of step with the public’s intuitions. Most Americans agree with the basic aims of copyright and trademark law. They agree that artists should be paid for their work, and that companies should be able to defend their brands from counterfeiters and counterfeit products. I do, too. But that does not mean Americans will agree to extreme measures that trample on their rights in the rush to enforce the rights of copyright owners.

  The third lesson is that laws shouldn’t be crafted by paying attention to the views of just one part of the body politic. To the movie studios and the record labels, it seemed common sense to enlist the government to enforce their rights without regard to the consequences to others. Through hard and skillful lobbying, they seemed to have the votes inside the beltway, until the public found out what they were doing. For measures that affect the rights of the public, it is unwise t
o ignore the interests of the public.

  President Kennedy had it right when he remarked that “victory has a thousand fathers, but defeat is an orphan.” As the public outcry grew and continued after SOPA failed, the opposition in Congress that had begun with a handful of Members grew to hundreds of representatives.

  Today, I no longer feel isolated in the effort to fight for innovation, free speech, and privacy. But this will not be the last time a free and open Internet is challenged. The next time—or the next dozen times—we may not be so lucky. The threat is real and will likely recur.

  The Internet is a thriving and vibrant engine for cultural and economic growth because it empowers people to connect and share information globally with limited restrictions. SOPA’s legacy should be more than a moment in history—it should jumpstart a conversation about the kind of Internet we want going forward.

  With the DMCA approaching its second decade, we may need proactive laws designed to preserve an open and truly global Internet from destructive legislation, unduly restrictive treaties and trade agreements, and overbroad government surveillance. Is it time for a new generation of forward-thinking laws to protect Internet users’ free expression and privacy, preserve user trust in online services, and reaffirm the open and decentralized structure of the Internet? Will those who rose up to protect the free Internet from SOPA/PIPA rise again for a proactive effort to pass those laws? Only time will tell. But I’m ready if you are.

  AFTER THE BLACKOUT

  AARON SWARTZ

  For millions of Americans, the SOPA/PIPA battle was one of the most interesting stories of the year. Indeed, the whole affair made Time Magazine’s 2012 roundup of the year’s top “losers.”

  The wheels came off the bus pretty quickly after the markup. First the Republican senators pulled out. Then the White House issued a statement opposing the bill. Then the Democrats, left all alone, announced they were pulling the bill so they could have a few further discussions before the vote.

  And that was when, as hard as it was for me to believe, we won.

  The thing that everyone said was impossible, that some of the biggest companies in the world had written off as a pipe dream—had happened.

  We did it.

  We won.

  And then we started rubbing it in.

  You all know what happened next: Wikipedia went black. Reddit went black. Craigslist went black. The phones lines on Capitol Hill flat-out melted. Members of Congress started rushing to issue statements retracting their support for the bill.

  It was just ridiculous.

  There’s a chart from that time that captures it quite well. It says something like:

  January 14

  and then it has this big long list of names supporting the bill, and just a handful of lonely ones opposing it. And then: January 15.

  And suddenly it’s totally reversed—everyone is opposing, with just a few lonely people left in support.

  This really was unprecedented. Don’t take my word for it. Former Sen. Chris Dodd, now chief lobbyist from Hollywood, who admitted after this that he had masterminded the whole SOPA plan, told the New York Times he’d never seen anything like it during his many years in Congress.

  Everyone I’ve spoken to agrees.

  The people rose up and caused a sea change in Washington. Not the press, which refused to cover the story (coincidentally, their parent companies all happened to be lobbying for the bill). Not the politicians, who were pretty much unanimously in favor of it. And not the companies, who had all but given up trying to stop it, decided it was inevitable. It was stopped by the people.

  The people themselves.

  We killed the bill dead. So dead that when members of Congress propose something that even touches the Internet, they give a long speech beforehand about how it is definitely not at all like SOPA. So dead that when you ask Congressional staffers about it, they groan and shake their heads, like it’s all a bad dream they’re trying hard to forget. So dead, that it’s hard to believe this story. Hard to remember how close it all came to actually passing. Hard to remember how it could have been any other way.

  But it wasn’t a dream, or a nightmare. It was all very real. And it will happen again. Sure, it will have a different name, and maybe a different excuse, and probably do its damage in a different way. But make no mistake. The enemies of the freedom to connect have not disappeared. The fire in those politicians’ eyes has not been put out.

  There are a lot of powerful people who want to clamp down on the Internet. And, to be honest, there aren’t a whole lot who have a vested interest in protecting it. Even some of the biggest Internet companies, to put it frankly, would benefit from a world in which their little competitors could be censored.

  We can’t let that happen.

  I’ve told this as a personal story. Partly, because I think big stories like this are just more interesting at human scale. The director J. D. Walsh said good stories should be like the poster for Transformers. There’s a huge robot on the left side of the poster and a huge army on the right, but in the middle, at the bottom, there’s just a small family, trapped in between. Big stories need human stakes.

  But mostly, it’s a personal story because I haven’t had the time to research anyone else’s.

  We won this fight because everyone made themselves the hero of their own story. Everyone took it as their job to save this crucial freedom. They threw themselves into it, did whatever they could think of to do, didn’t stop to ask anyone for permission.

  Did you hear how Hacker News users spontaneously organized a boycott of GoDaddy over their support of SOPA? Nobody told them they could do that. A lot of people even thought it was a bad idea. It didn’t matter. The senators were right. The Internet really is out of control.

  But if we forget that. If we let Hollywood rewrite the story so that is was just Big Company Google who stopped the bill. If we let them persuade us we didn’t actually make a difference. If we start seeing it as someone else’s responsibility and go home and pop some popcorn and curl up on the couch to watch Transformers …

  Well then, next time, they might just win.

  Let’s not let that happen.

  WHO REALLY STOPPED SOPA – AND WHY

  LARRY DOWNES

  Larry Downes is a consultant and speaker on developing business strategies in an age of constant disruption caused by information technology. His book Unleashing the Killer App: Digital Strategies for Market Dominance was named by the Wall Street Journal as one of the five most important books ever published on business and technology.

  I split my time these days between Silicon Valley and Capitol Hill, and the week of the Blackout was not a very good week to be in Washington. In the fall, I witnessed the beginnings of a unique revolt over proposed legislation that would have dramatically changed the Internet’s business landscape. That revolt achieved a stunning victory, sending Congress into a tailspin of retreat from bills that seemed certain, only months ago, to pass with little notice or resistance.

  The two bills were the Senate’s Protect IP Act and the House’s Stop Online Piracy Act, or #PIPA and #SOPA as they became known on Twitter, where millions of tweets condemned them and their supporters in and out of Congress. Heavily backed by D.C. favorites including the U. S. Chamber of Commerce and the music and motion picture industries, the legislation was superficially aimed at combating the scourge of foreign websites selling unlicensed or counterfeit American goods to U.S. consumers outside the legal reach of criminal and civil enforcement.

  But to Internet users, the proposed legislation and the process by which it was steamrolled through a supine Congress took on mythic attributes. By January the firefight had morphed into a battle of old economy vs. new, of business as usual in Washington vs. the organized chaos of online life, of K Street lobbyists vs. ordinary users.

  The Internet was having its Howard Beale moment—users were mad as hell, and they weren’t going to take it anymore. The legislation needed to be stopp
ed, by any means necessary. PIPA and SOPA became nothing less than a referendum on who controlled the evolution of digital life. And amidst the smoke and noise on the field, it was hard to tell who was really directing the troops.

  One thing is now entirely clear. The Internet won, at least for now. A week or two before, at the annual Consumer Electronics Show, lawmakers and industry representatives were clearly in retreat, calling at last—but with panic in their eyes—for constructive dialogue. Sandra Aistars, executive director of the Copyright Alliance, even complained that the technology community had failed to propose concrete “tweaks” to fix the bills. “A lot of the response has been amped up rhetoric that misstates the bills and the intentions of its proponents,” Aistars said. “It is not directed to particular fixes.”

  But the time for constructive dialogue, which Congress and industry groups had overtly snubbed all year, was over. As CES attendees made their way home over the holiday weekend, the Obama administration, which had been notably silent, weighed in against the bills in their current form. “While we believe that online piracy by foreign websites is a serious problem that requires a serious legislative response,” administration officials said, “we will not support legislation that reduces freedom of expression, increases cybersecurity risk, or undermines the dynamic, innovative global Internet.”

  Another nail.

  By the time the Congressional Internet Caucus convened its annual “State of the Net” meeting a few days later, it was clear that something dramatic was happening. Defections accelerated to an unprecedented rate as advocacy groups opposed to the bills shuttled between Congressional offices. Co-sponsors were now condemning the legislation. By Tuesday, it was no longer clear if Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) even had enough votes to stop a promised filibuster from Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) on Jan. 24th, when Reid intended to force a floor vote on PIPA.