There was probably a year or so of delay. And, in retrospect, we used the time to lay the groundwork for what came later. But that’s not what it felt like at the time. At the time, it felt like we were going around telling people we thought these bills were awful and, in return, they thought we were crazy. I mean, kids wandering around waving their arms about how the government is going to censor the Internet? It sounds crazy.
You can ask my friends. I was constantly telling them about what was going on, trying to get them involved, and I’m pretty sure they just thought I was exaggerating. Even I began to doubt myself! I started wondering: was this really that big a deal? Why should I expect anyone to care? It was a tough period.
But when the bill came back and started moving again, it all started coming together. All the folks we had talked to suddenly began really getting involved—and getting others involved. Everything started snowballing.
It happened so fast. I remember one week, I was having dinner with a fellow in the technology industry. He asked what I worked on and I told him about this bill.
“Wow,” he said. “You need to tell people about that.”
I groaned.
And then, just a few weeks later, I was chatting with this cute girl on the subway. She wasn’t involved in the technology industry, but when she heard that I was she turned to me, very seriously, and said “You know, we have to stop SOAP.”
Progress.
But that’s illustrative of what happened during those couple weeks. Because the reason we won wasn’t because I worked to stop SOPA or reddit did or Google or Tumblr or anyone else. It was because there was this enormous mental shift. It was suddenly everyone’s responsibility. Everyone was thinking of ways they could help—often clever, ingenious ways. They made videos and infographics and started PACs and designed ads and bought billboards and wrote news stories and held meetings. Everyone wanted to help.
I remember at one point during this period, I helped organize a meeting of startups in New York, trying to encourage everyone to get involved in doing their part. And I tried a trick that I heard Bill Clinton used to fund his foundation, the Clinton Global Initiative. I turned to every startup founder in the room in turn and said “What are you going to do?”—and they all wanted to one-up each other.
If there was one day that this shift happened, I think it was the day of the hearings on SOPA in the House, the day that we got the phrase “It’s no longer OK to not understand the Internet.” Something about watching those clueless members of Congress debate the bill, watching them insist that they could regulate the Internet and a bunch of nerds couldn’t stop them—that really brought it home for people. This was happening. Congress was going to break the Internet and it just didn’t care.
It became a popular refrain for SOPA/PIPA protestors to suggest “It’s no longer OK to NOT know how the Internet works.” See the protest signs above from the Jan. 18,2012 NY Tech Meetup.
I remember when that moment first hit me. I was at an event and I got introduced to a U.S. senator—one of the strong proponents of the original COICA bill. And I asked him why, despite being such a progressive, despite giving a speech in favor of civil liberties, he was supporting a bill that would censor the Internet.
And the typical politician’s smile faded from his face and his eyes started burning a fiery red. And he started shouting. Something like, “Those people on the Internet!” He yelled, “They think they can get away with anything! They think they can just put anything up and there’s nothing we can do to stop them! They put up everything! They put up the plans to our fighter jets and they just laugh at us! Well, we’re going to show them. There’s got to be laws on the Internet—it’s got to be under control.”
Now, as far as I know, no one has ever put the plans to U.S. fighter jets up on the Internet. I mean, that’s just not something I’ve heard about. And there’s absolutely no way whatsoever that COICA, PIPA, or SOPA would’ve addressed that issue: it’s simply not what the bills were constructed to do—even a cursory reading of them makes that evident. But that’s sort of the point. It wasn’t a rational consideration—it was an irrational fear that things were out of control. Here was this man, a United States senator! And those people on the Internet? They were just mocking him. They had to be brought under control. Things had to be under control.
That was the attitude of Congress. And just as seeing that fire in the senators’ eyes scared me, I think it scared a lot of people. This wasn’t the attitude of a thoughtful government trying to resolve tradeoffs in order to best represent its citizens. This was the attitude of a tyrant.
And the citizens fought back.