Without Their Permission: How the 21st Century Will Be Made, Not Managed

by Alexis Ohanian

  Mr. Chaffetz and the House of Representatives were the furthest things from my mind while I was relaxing with my girlfriend on the beach, but it was Mr. Chaffetz’s comments that led to another fateful e-mail. It came from someone in the office of Darrell Issa (R-California), chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. The e-mail itself was a pretty simple press release:

  ISSA ANNOUNCES OVERSIGHT HEARING ON DNS & SEARCH ENGINE BLOCKING

  WASHINGTON, DC—House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform Chairman Darrell Issa (R-CA) today announced that the Full Committee will hold a hearing on January 18 to examine the potential impact of Domain Name Service (DNS) and search engine blocking on American cyber-security, jobs and the Internet community. In light of policy proposals affecting the way taxpayers access the Internet, the hearing will also explore federal government strategies to protect American intellectual property without adversely affecting economic growth. The Committee will hear testimony from top cyber-security experts and technology job creators.

  “An open Internet is crucial to American job creation, government operations, and the daily routines of Americans from all walks of life,” said Issa. “The public deserves a full discussion about the consequences of changing the way Americans access information and communicate on the Internet today.”

  WITNESSES

  Mr. Stewart Baker: Partner, Steptoe & Johnson LLP

  Mr. Brad Burnham: Partner, Union Square Ventures

  Mr. Daniel Kaminsky: Security Researcher and Fortune 500 Advisor

  Mr. Michael Macleod-Ball: Chief of Staff/First Amendment Counsel, American Civil Liberties Union

  Mr. Lanham Napier: Chief Executive Officer, Rackspace Hosting

  Dr. Leonard Napolitano: Director, Center for Computer Sciences & Information Technology Sandia National Laboratories

  Mr. Alexis Ohanian: Co-Founder, Reddit.com, and Web Entrepreneur

  There I was, along with six other expert nerds. In just over a week, we would be testifying before Congress.

  Meanwhile, on the Internet…

  Of course, I wasn’t the only one up in arms about SOPA and PIPA—far from it. Across the web, millions of people—a few famous, but most of them not; some using their real names, others anonymous—were furiously working to spread the word about these bills and coordinate a response that would get the attention of lawmakers. Months of action online and extensive social media chatter led up to a day of protest on January 18, 2012. The impact of this off-line and online protest was unlike anything seen before in the United States. Fifteen years earlier, the US Supreme Court talked about the potential for anyone using the Internet to “become a town crier with a voice that resonates farther than it could from any soapbox,” but until this watershed moment, we’d never seen that voice actually resonate among millions of people.7 The social web changed that, and the defeat of SOPA and PIPA was, poetically, enabled by the very technology those bills threatened.

  Israeli-American legal scholar Yochai Benkler researched what he calls the “networked public sphere” using eighteen months of text and link analysis to identify the most-linked-to online sources as the voice of the “town crier” resonated across the web.8 At this point it shouldn’t surprise you that there wasn’t just one source, but rather a chorus. It all started on September 20, 2010—which, if you’re keeping track, is more than a year before I even got involved—with an article in The Hill about a “bipartisan bill” called COICA (Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act).9 Just three days later, it’d be up for a vote—a curiously quick process—and with bipartisan support from members of the Senate Judiciary Committee it looked like a done deal.

  Early attention to this bill came largely from the tech press—both mainstream publications, such as Wired.com, and niche publications, such as techdirt.com—and from nonprofits, such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which was railing against the bill, and Demand Progress, which was gathering signatures on a petition against it. Unfortunately, the bill passed the Senate Judiciary Committee—unanimously.

  Now imagine this part in slow motion with dramatic music playing in the background: Senator Ron Wyden (D-Oregon) put a hold on the bill, saying, “The collateral damage of this statute could be American innovation, American jobs, and a secure Internet.”10 Epic. The bill was not gone, however. A year later it returned—still awful—with a new name: the PROTECT IP Act (PIPA). The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) would follow in the House. Fortunately for us, when it comes to the speed of innovation, that’s a long time in Internet years.

  As Yochai Benkler’s research shows, Senator Wyden declared in a widely linked release in May of 2011 that he would also place a hold on this new bill. But this release also served as a call to the Internet public for help.11 Content began to surface and websites emerged that called for even more action. One of these sites, AmericanCensorship.org, was organized by the group Fight for the Future, which proved to be a powerful mobilizing force in the months that followed. All the while attention was coming from across the political spectrum, from Pajamas Media (right-leaning) to the Democratic Underground (left-leaning) to the venture capital community (Fred Wilson at Union Square Ventures). People weren’t linking just for information; they were linking to take action.

  On December 21, the Judiciary Committee named all the corporate supporters of these bills. The next day, a redditor named selfprodigy suggested that people boycott one of those companies, GoDaddy, a popular domain-name registrar known for its tacky television commercials and even worse taste in legislation.12 The boycott went viral within hours.

  Later that same day, GoDaddy withdrew its support for the bills.13

  That early taste of success emboldened us even more. Early in the new year, moderators of popular subreddits discussed blacking out for a day in protest of SOPA and PIPA.14 More and more moderators signed on until eventually the reddit administrative team decided to take down the entire website for twelve hours on January 18.15 Instead of the usual list of top links, millions of visitors would be greeted with a short explanation about SOPA, PIPA, the blackout, and what they could do to help.

  This started a chain reaction among other sites that culminated a week later, when the Wikipedia community voted to go dark for the day as well.16 Suddenly the blackout was everywhere. Even Google agreed to censor their logo and offered visitors a chance to learn about the digital protest. All told, most of the biggest names in the Internet economy did something in protest: Wikipedia, Google, Mozilla, Tumblr, WordPress, Fark, Cheezburger, Imgur, and, of course, reddit, to name just a few.

  But it wasn’t just about the dot-com startups. Hundreds of webcomics, including xkcd, The Oatmeal, Dinosaur Comics, Cyanide & Happiness, and Zach Weinersmith’s Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal (from chapter 7), agreed to black out together in solidarity. The artists behind these comics made their living thanks to an open Internet. Thousands of other websites, large and small, from craigslist to mommy bloggers—even the iSchool at Syracuse University—all pledged to join together in a day of blackout.

  Social media has made huge strides in terms of changing the way we hear about and spread the news. For Washington lawmakers who may not “do e-mail,” however, nothing beats hearing your message from an anchor on CNN or Fox News.

  While I’m quite proud of reddit for being the first to black out, it was Wikipedia’s participation that forced the mainstream media to pay attention. Until Wikipedia announced it was joining in the blackouts, the major television networks (MSNBC, Fox News, ABC, CBS, and NBC) had basically ignored both bills during their evening broadcasts. One network, CNN, devoted a single evening segment to it, but that was it.17 The reason was pretty straightforward. As David Carr of The New York Times18 wrote:

  Virtually every traditional media company in the United States loudly and enthusiastically supported SOPA, but that doesn’t mean it’s good for the rest of us. The open consumer Web has been a motor of American innovation and the attempt to curtail
some of its excesses could throw sand in the works of a big machine on which we have all come to rely.

  With the mainstream media—especially US television news outlets—shirking its duty to inform the public, the task of teaching people about SOPA and PIPA was basically left to the Internet.19

  Lies, Damned Lies, and the Entertainment Industry

  So even though Congress wasn’t in session, I was spending my time in paradise on my laptop rather than with my girlfriend. Preparing for my testimony was even more nerve-racking than that TED talk. As the day of my testimony drew closer, I researched as much as I could, calling friends who’d actually testified before Congress, watching ace testimonies on YouTube, and drafting my arguments. Meanwhile, the Internet public was busy doing such a tremendous job spreading the word about SOPA and PIPA that things really started falling apart for those bills that weekend. A new e-mail popped up in my in-box from a producer at MSNBC who wanted me to stop by Up with Chris Hayes20 for a friendly chat with an executive from NBC as soon as I got back to New York. I jumped on it. The executive may have had the home field advantage, but I had millions of Americans at my back.

  The following Saturday night, with my House Oversight Committee hearing just a few days away, Darrell Issa issued a press release at 1:00 a.m.21 announcing the postponement of the hearing. Some of SOPA’s supporters in the House were finally getting the message. On top of that, the White House was about to make a statement in response to petitions from citizens in opposition to these bills: “We will not support legislation that reduces freedom of expression, increases cybersecurity risk, or undermines the dynamic, innovative global Internet.”22 Zing. I wasn’t going back to Washington after all.23

  But our work was far from over. That Sunday, refreshed but without a tan, I showed up for my appearance on MSNBC. I figured our efforts must have really upset the guys in the executive lounge, because my counterpart turned out to be Rick Cotton, executive vice president and general counsel of NBCUniversal. Considering the momentum we were gathering, he must not have had a very good weekend.

  Before the interview, I was in the MSNBC greenroom with Jack Abramoff, lamenting the deleterious effects that lobbying was having on politics. Agreeing with Jack Abramoff is a weird feeling, but he told me he had never seen anything like this before—the entertainment industry almost always gets its way. There was significantly less banter between Mr. Cotton and me once he entered.

  Everyone got a quick dose of makeup, and we were escorted to our assigned seats on the stage. No one touched the breakfast foods on the table. Pro tip: I’ve learned from multiple TV appearances now that the food on the table is in fact edible. As one who hates wasting food, I’ll usually nosh off-camera and then obsessively make sure there’s nothing stuck in my teeth before the camera blinks red again. That morning, however, I left the muffins alone. Too nervous. I’d prepared for a lot of things, but I hadn’t prepared for Richard Cotton to come out with a full arsenal of frenzied malarkey.24

  There was no discussion—just Cotton’s barrage of misleading talking points and interruptions. I was frustrated. I’d done live television before—the goal is to say as much as you can in as few words as possible and look confident doing it—but I’d never done live television in this format before.

  Cotton opened by stressing a point that the entertainment industry had been repeating from the start: “This legislation would not affect a single site in the United States.” I’ve already pointed out that American companies, including payment processors and advertising networks, would have had to stop doing business with certain websites simply because a private company had filed a notice of infringement. Furthermore, Steve and I could not have started reddit if we had been liable for every piece of user-generated content on the site, nor could any website with user-generated content have begun or survived.

  Even more frustrating was that this lawyer was effectively telling an entrepreneur, “I know your own company better than you do.” What I should have said was this: “Yes, actually, American companies—like mine—would be affected. You can tell from the first few pages of the bill alone, the definitions section, that the writer lacked the technological understanding to even correctly distinguish foreign from domestic websites: American companies with foreign domain names are called ��foreign Internet sites.’ I’m here this morning not only because my American company would be affected but also because countless more American companies would be affected. Companies that exist today may never exist tomorrow because of these bills.”

  Unfortunately, that’s not what I said. What actually fell out of my mouth was something more like:

  “What troubles me is that… for instance… the anticircumvention policies would lump reddit, or really any…”

  Ugh. Fail. I go on to discuss the nuances of a provision of the bills that First Amendment expert Marvin Ammori warns could be interpreted to require any website that contains user-generated content (from reddit to a personal blog that allows comments) to police every single piece of content for any information about circumvention information (such as where to illegally download the latest Fast & Furious sequel). If the site didn’t comply, it would risk legal action.25 It’s simply unfeasible to police an entire website of user-generated content on which there could be hundreds, or thousands, or tens of thousands (you get the point) of new entries every minute. But that was way too many words for a Sunday morning talk show.

  Cotton interrupted me.

  “That is simply wrong!” he exclaimed.

  I continued, trying to remain calm. Inside, I’m flipping out. Fortunately, the camera wasn’t on me, because the veins in my forehead undoubtedly started to bulge.

  While I was stumbling, Cotton was deftly tweaking his message. “This legislation is devoted exclusively to foreign sites.”

  See what he did there? It may be devoted exclusively to foreign sites, but if it happens to wipe out domestic sites, so it goes—it’s still devoted exclusively to foreign sites, and the domestic sites are collateral damage. Suddenly Laurence Tribe’s “blunderbuss” metaphor really hits home: the barrel of these bills is pointed abroad, but domestic sites and Internet users are in the line of fire. And that simply will not do.

  I got my chance for redemption on the morning of the protests, with Soledad O’Brien on CNN.26 This time, I made sure to emphasize simply and unequivocally how bad these bills would be for our freedom to connect. Did I mention that the tech industry was one of the healthiest sectors of the US economy, a source of optimism and innovation even in the middle of a recession? “If [SOPA and PIPA] had existed,” I told Soledad, “Steve Huffman and I could have never started reddit. It’s frustrating to see legislation that was written by lobbyists and not technologists perhaps become law.” And then I went for the jugular, with a sound bite crafted in response to scores of great online comments about my MSNBC interview:

  I just wish we had been called to the table when this legislation was written…. It’s just so frustrating because we look at Congress and we can’t see them do anything that’s important. They can’t solve the problems of unemployment, they can’t solve the problems of the deficit. Yet as soon as a lobbyist shows up with ninety-four million dollars, Democrats and Republicans line up to co-sponsor it. Something is wrong.27

  And we had a solution.

  Geeks in the Streets

  That same day, NY Tech Meetup, a group of more than thirty thousand New York City–based technologists, organized an emergency meeting to protest the bills at the offices of the New York senators. After I left CNN, I raced across midtown to do what I could to help.

  I made it to the protest just as it was setting up. Thousands of New Yorkers showed up on a surprisingly sunny winter afternoon in midtown (where nerds fear to tread—so you know this was important). We were protesting in front of the offices of Senators Gillibrand and Schumer, both of whom supported the Senate bill, PIPA, which was reeling but still up for discussion.

  The protesters were
angry but polite, their signs clever and without spelling or grammatical errors. In most cases the protesters were even reasonably well dressed—they all looked like people you’d enjoy sitting next to on the subway. Entire offices in the New York tech community had emptied out to come here. Most people would rather have been back in the office inventing the future, but today that future was threatened.

  Swarms of reporters gathered around the small stage and modest audio setup. One sign said it all—it also happened to become the iconic image from the protest: IT’S NO LONGER OK TO NOT KNOW HOW THE INTERNET WORKS.28

  The person holding it wasn’t a fresh-faced geeky male in a hoodie, either. It was a middle-aged woman wearing a stern look and carrying an even sterner message for her lawmakers.

  There were speakers (including me), but there was no one leader—ours was a leaderful movement. Not unlike the net itself.

  Speaking in front of an audience of a few thousand members of the New York tech community, I used the opportunity to emphasize the issue that a country in recession cares most about—jobs. When I was called to the stage, the microphone was a good foot too short for me, so I awkwardly stood half on the platform and half off. Good enough. As long as they saw me only from the waist up, they’d never know how weird I looked standing there.

  “We’re here because we’re fighting against the wholesale—wholesale—destruction of one of the healthiest parts of America’s economy,” I said.

  This was the same way I had introduced myself to congressional representatives when I visited the Hill in November. It worked because it was true—we’d gotten to live the American dream thanks to an open Internet, and these bills would’ve made that impossible for us and all the other entrepreneurs you’ve been reading about who rely upon the Internet to help themselves.