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

by Alexis Ohanian

  I know it’s not polite to bring this up, but a little while after January 18, 2012, it seemed like our government would have a new level of accountability. Congress had abysmal approval ratings back then—worse than colonoscopies1—yet the Internet public realized that the connected web could give them leverage over even the richest and most entrenched lobbying groups. We had our congressional representatives and senators on speed dial. We would call them to check up on things and correct them when they did something bad—just as a good boss should. We paid their salaries, we hired and fired them—why shouldn’t we know what they’re up to? Social media, which gave us unprecedented access into the mundane lives of strangers, made us feel entitled to know what our elected officials were doing and helped us to hold them accountable. It even looked like we were going to develop better politicians in the process, as their attention became more focused on their voters than on the biggest donors to their campaigns. That was silly and naive of us.

  Back when I finished my first book, Without Their Permission, I really thought we were going to make the right decisions, too. The open Internet, as a platform, used to embody so many of the highest ideals of this country. Our Internet was filled with the true spirit of innovation, entrepreneurship, helping yourself as well as others, and the freedom to connect whenever you want—as well as the right to privacy when you don’t. We could have been real role models for the world. Our bad, guys.

  Well, now I’ve got a flight back to Shanghai to catch. It’s a shame I had to move my company there, but the level and quantity of science, engineering, technology, and math talent over there made it an easy business decision. It’s sad because of how much I loved not only this country but also the freedom to innovate and tinker, which encouraged so many of us back then.

  I’m truly sorry. We had a great opportunity, but we failed, and now it’s you all, our future, who are left with the consequences. The irony isn’t lost on me—we all let it happen without your permission.

  Yikes. That would have been a terrible way to end this book. Let me try again.

  Here’s how we could do better….

  Not only did we successfully defend the open Internet, we pushed for reforms that promoted innovation and equal access. After all, the American public had already spoken loud and clear about their support for Internet freedom. My friend Erik Martin and I saw it firsthand on the Internet 2012 Bus Tour. It really hit home early one morning in rural Richmond, Missouri, as we all feasted on breakfast courtesy of farmer Tom Parker and his family. Tom’s industry is one of the oldest in America—agriculture—and he confessed to checking his e-mail only three times a week. For me, a geek in Brooklyn, checking only three times in an hour seems low, but the Internet economy has already drastically changed the Parker family farm. More than 90 percent of Tom’s customers now come to him through the Internet, thanks to a Kansas City–based startup called AgLocal. It may have been the delicious second helping of eggs I’d just eaten, but it was there on that farm, with cows mooing in the background, that I realized just what an impact the Internet was having. Tom Parker gets it: “Putting family farms on a level playing field can only happen because the cost of sharing a story on the Internet is nothing.”2 We need to make sure his elected representatives get it, too.

  That’s why we did the bus tour, and why our friends at NimbleBot filmed a documentary about the journey, Silicon Prairie: America’s New Internet Economy, which inspired others around the world to do the same for their own local Internet economies. We screened our film to a packed room at the Newseum in Washington, DC. The four sitting US representatives (two Republicans and two Democrats) in attendance celebrated the film and what it stood for. It stood, of course, for progress. Whether we worry about big government or big business, let’s not allow either one of them to ruin one of mankind’s greatest innovations.

  We’ll continue to triumph over misinformation, despite the best efforts of a few to stifle the freedom of the many. The onus is on all of us to educate each and every one of our elected officials. Should governments ever make the tragic decision that intellectual property is actual property and enforce strict penalties for blurring the distinction, most forms of online speech would become violations of IP law. Copying a digital file (such as a picture of a car) is not theft, because the original picture is still entirely intact; you just have two of them now. Stealing a car is theft, because the original car is not in the place it was before. Please refer, people, to this handy chart:

  Our Internet-enabled computing devices are essentially copy machines that make all the ingenuity we see online possible. There is no viable technological alternative, because it’s the very nature of the platform. It’s the freedom inherent in the open Internet that has enabled and empowered Steve and me, Charles Best, Debby Guardino, Zach Anner, Zach Weinersmith, Lester Chambers, and countless others around the world. Less than ten years earlier, none of their achievements would have been possible. Imagine what just a decade more of Internet freedom will do.

  That’s how fast innovation moves online—not just for startups, but also, as I’ve shown, in the fields of art, activism, philanthropy, and politics. Every industry is getting swallowed up as code eats the world, and the result is a free and flat network. That’s why bridging the digital divide is so important—it’s part access and part education, and it’s all vital both to the health of our nations and to our Internet. A quality Internet connection is a public utility that should be accessible to all people, regardless of how much money they have and where they live. If we believe every American has a right to electricity, why would we withhold humanity’s greatest omnidirectional flow of information?

  The Internet (called ARPANET back in its infancy) was born in America with a connection between two computers, one at UCLA and the other in Menlo Park, California. Yet today, “nineteen million Americans, many in rural areas… can’t get access to a high-speed connection at any price, it’s just not there. And for a third of all Americans… it’s just too expensive.”3 That’s research from Susan Crawford, law professor and technology expert, who has done tremendous work bringing this reality to light and letting us know that we should all take action to give Americans the access they deserve. Children in twenty-first-century America shouldn’t have to go to McDonald’s to do their homework, yet that’s what they do.4 How else can we, the country that currently leads the world in the Internet industry (and there aren’t many industries we still dominate globally), continue to keep our competitive edge?

  “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.” Those are the words of Thomas Jefferson with which I began chapter 2. Equality is an ideal we still strive for, but it is truly encapsulated in the technology of the World Wide Web. It’s fitting that those words were referenced in Dr. Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech, which is itself a glorious remix, sampling the Bible, the Gettysburg Address, “My Country, ’Tis of Thee,” and even Shakespeare. It’s arguably the most famous speech of twentieth-century American history—but it’s also still under copyright, so you can’t watch it unless someone pays for it.

  Originally, the length of copyright in the United States was fourteen years. This is far beyond what our Founding Fathers outlined. Thanks to lobbying by the entertainment industry—in the decades before we had a connected Internet public to combat such awful legislation—copyright now extends for the life of the author plus at least seventy years.5 Jefferson even proposed putting an explicit limit on copyright length into the Bill of Rights.6 T.J. recognized, even back then, how important it was to keep information as free as possible. If his amendment had made it into the final draft, then we could all freely watch Dr. King’s historic speech whenever we wanted. Instead, we still fight, not just for reasonable copyright reform but also to nurture great ideas before they’re bullied out of existence.

  This entire book was made possible thanks to a free Internet. The first part was my own story of startup success, but my story i
s just one of many. I could very likely be writing a chapter in my next book (should I be so lucky) about you.7 It won’t be easy; you’ll need to develop your skills, work hard, and get a good dose of luck, but a computer, an Internet connection, and time are the only raw materials required.

  The sad reality is that there are still too many people who don’t have access to the Internet, and if they do, they don’t have the skills to master it. This book cannot provide an Internet connection for you (believe me, if it could, it would), so I wrote the second part because I want you to save your money and not bother getting an MBA. This book is way cheaper.8 Beyond that, there are opportunities to learn from communities both online and off-line. We humans have been making connections for the purpose of learning and sharing information since the beginning of time. Whether you’re learning how to build your first Android application or sharing your thoughts about Twilight Sparkle,9 the Internet has made that a whole lot more efficient. Every day I encounter people who are using the Internet to pursue their dreams or to enrich their lives, but we need more of them.

  By the way, being entrepreneurial is not limited to entrepreneurs. The last part of this book is a testament to that. Charles Best, Debby Guardino, Zach Anner, Zach Weinersmith, Lester Chambers, and countless participants in the fight against SOPA and PIPA wouldn’t necessarily be thought of as traditional entrepreneurs, but in spirit, they are undoubtedly entrepreneurial. They’ve found success because they could use this great equalizer—the open Internet—to spread their ideas, find their audiences, and ultimately surmount traditional barriers.

  The open Internet is not a magic wand, but as a technology it has the potential to do tremendous things—to allow awesome people to reach their full potential. It is ultimately incumbent upon us, as builders and users of this platform, to see that it lives up to its own full potential. As we look, wide-eyed, into the future, let’s remember that the baggage of our society comes with us online. While the Internet as a technology is flat, as long as all links are equal, the world we live in is still full of inequality. Most of my now-lionized peers, the founders of the Internet’s original startups, are straight white young men. But as it turns out, the world is not full of only young straight white guys—in fact, far from it. What excites me so much about this technology is how it democratizes knowledge as well as distribution. But the system lives up to its full potential only if all of us have access and the skills to make the most out of it.

  In sum, it’s not enough to just go forth and create without asking anyone’s permission, or to help others who are trying to do the same. Like the Internet itself, we are greater than just the sum of our parts. We’re not yet taking full advantage of all our parts, but we get closer every day, thanks to all the individuals and organizations striving toward it. Think of all the genius the world has missed out on simply because otherwise awesome people got bad “life lottery” tickets. It motivates me and many more to work toward building an open Internet, if for no other reason than it’s going to mean better stuff—better businesses and better nonprofits, better artists and better activists, and, yes, even better politicians. It’s going to enable awesome people to actually be awesome in a way that they couldn’t have been before.

  Remember, this is just the beginning. Everything I’ve written about has happened only in the last decade, which is but a moment given the speed of innovation online. Imagine what this next decade will bring. Every child who grows up with an Internet connection and the skills to make the most of it is yet another potential founder, or artist, or activist, or philanthropist, or… I don’t know, that’s just it: I can look her in the eyes and tell her that she doesn’t need to ask anyone’s permission to go learn about the printing press, or start publishing her photography, or rally her community to fix a dilapidated playground, or begin working on the next big thing. No, none of these things are going to be easy, but I’m certainly not going to be the one to tell her she can’t do them.

  Let me put it this way: if the Industrial Revolution changed the world, the current revolution, powered by software and the Internet, is destined to do the same, but far more democratically. Instead of opening a factory, you need only open your laptop.

  I hope you’re convinced. And more important, I trust you’ll do something good with that conviction. Spread the word, give this book to someone who needs to read it, put your politicians on notice, and make things people love.

  Start.

  Please.

  What are you waiting for? Someone’s permission?

  Acknowledgments

  I had no idea what I was getting myself into in terms of writing a book, and I’m grateful to everyone who helped along the way.

  My editor, Rick Wolff, took a chance on a serial entrepreneur but first-time author and even indulged my fondness for waffles on more than one occasion. (There are no Waffle Houses in New York City, so we go to IHOP.) I hope the fate of this book makes you look really prescient. I also want to thank Rick’s brilliant team at Business Plus, including Meredith Haggerty, Amanda Pritzker, Carolyn Kurek, Barbara Clark, and Liz Connor (what a cool book cover!).

  The person who first said, “Yeah, you should write a book,” was Erin Malone, my agent. What she doesn’t know is that after meeting her, I canceled all my other meetings with prospective agents. Thanks, Erin.

  My girlfriend, Sabriya Stukes, put up with the late nights of writing, frantic last-minute backups, and has generally put up with someone who works as much as I do. Now that my book is done, I’m going to take you on a nice vacation—someplace with no Internet!

  Justin Keenan helped make everything I wrote awesome before I even sent it to Rick. His edits and suggestions were always delivered with humor I didn’t know was capable via Microsoft Word’s Track Changes. I’ve yet to meet him in person; the Internet rocks.

  Kathrina Manalac, Christina Xu, and Joe Alger all make my life (and thus this book) possible.

  I’m a lucky guy for having so many acclaimed writers for friends, to whom I’ve looked both in admiration as well as for advice. Thank you, Jenny 8. Lee, Tim Wu, Clay Shirky, Drew Curtis, Eddie Huang, and Shama Kabani.

  Steve Huffman, because if we hadn’t been living across the hall from each other our first year at the University of Virginia, I’d probably be an immigration lawyer. Without you, there’d be no book to write. This book doesn’t do your talents justice, so please write one of your own and let me blurb it.

  Dr. Chris Slowe and Kristen Sakillaris, you two are adorable together, but still not as adorable as my favorite un-goddaughter. Chris, Steve and I couldn’t have moved into a better apartment after Y Combinator. How fortuitous. Grateful to call you both friends.

  Thanks to Paul Graham, Jessica Livingston, Trevor Blackwell, and Robert Morris of Y Combinator for taking a chance on two fresh-faced UVA graduates, thus altering the course of our lives. In fact, my entire Y Combinator family is awesome. You all rock.

  I am grateful to all my book subjects for taking the time to open up about their lives and ambitions. Charles Best, Debby Guardino, Lester and Dylan Chambers, Zach Anner, and Zach Weinersmith—you all inspire me. (Mr. Weinersmith much less so than the rest of you.) Thank you for being some of the best examples of what an open Internet can do.

  Erik Martin, you sly dog. I know you remember what a big deal it was when the first talkies appeared, so your perspective on the Internet’s potential is especially valuable. The Internet 2012 Bus Tour never would’ve happened without you, or if it had, it would’ve been demonstrably less fabulous. Thank you for your friendship and your beard. In fact, thanks to everyone who not only made that bus tour possible, but made it so grand.

  For everyone who has fought and continues to fight for Internet freedom. I get more credit than I deserve. You all are the minutemen and -women making sure there’s an open World Wide Web for our grandchildren; I just get to be a town crier. Tif Cheng, Holmes Wilson, Derek Slater, Mike Masnick, Michael Petricone, Laurent Crenshaw, Seamus Kraft, Ben Huh
, Eli Pariser, Elizabeth Stark, Andrew Rasiej, Marvin Ammori, Craig Newmark, Josh Levy, Seth Bannon, Susan Crawford, and everyone at organizations like Fight for the Future, Engine Advocacy, Demand Progress, New York Tech Meetup, Electronic Frontier Foundation, Free Press, Public Knowledge, and all the countless others whose names I’ll never know.

  Writing a book while you’re also running and investing in startups doesn’t leave much free time, but I’ve got very understanding friends who forgave me for being even less responsive during my infamous “month of e-mail auto-responder.” Thanks especially to S. I. Newhouse, Dr. Huu Nguyen, and Andy Pham. And thanks to my new family—my two sisters Amy and Hayley, and Charlotte—you all are so incredibly supportive of me even though I’m terrible about remembering to call home.

  I had some life-changing professors during my four years at UVA—in particular Tom Bateman, Alon Confino, H. C. Erik Midelfort, Gordon Stewart, John Wheeler, and Mark White. Thank you for going above and beyond for the odd wahoo with green hair.

  The crew who’ve been my best friends since elementary school: Paul Burt, Brian Femiano, Mike Scrivener, Adam Solomon, Asa Solomon, Jon Swyers, and Jacob Winthrop. You guys are in the book!

  Stephen Colbert, we’re not friends, but you got me through a really hard year. Your show, The Colbert Report, launched just a month or so after I got the news about my mom, and I can’t even begin to tell you how much it did for me. Thank you for all the laughs, then and now.

  I wrote most of my book during the 2012 NFL season, which had a really positive effect on my mood (and thus productivity) until the first round of the playoffs, so I must also acknowledge two ’Skins in particular: Alfred Morris and Robert Griffin III. Son or daughter, I’m naming him or her Robert Griffin Ohanian.

  While I’m at it, nearly this entire book was written with either Jay-Z or Metallica (never both) playing in the background. One day we should all get brunch together. I’ll tease Lars Ulrich about his quixotic crusade against MP3s; Hova will hassle me for buying up his shares in the Brooklyn Nets; we’ll all laugh about the bizarre circumstances that brought us together.