Hacking Politics: How Geeks, Progressives, the Tea Party, Gamers, Anarchists, and Suits Teamed Up to Defeat SOPA and Save the Internet by and David Moon Patrick Ruffini David Segal Page A

you want to or have to wall your art off and make people pay for entry.
Edward J. Black
    An independent Government Accountability Office report in April 2010 showed that no reliable evidence or statistics exist to support the extreme claims of the entertainment industry of about $20 billion in losses from online copyright infringement. The entertainment industry has actually thrived over the last decade and is not suffering from Internet abuse, as is sometimes claimed.
Lawrence Lessig
    The striking fact about the SOPA/PIPA victory was that it was essentially cross-partisan. It was the Cato Institute as well as Demand Progress. It was net business as well as Wikipedia. There was no Left/Right valence to the fight against this Internet censorship. There was instead a brilliant campaign that succeeded in neutralizing those differences enough to allow all of us to focus on our common enemy.
    That in itself was an amazing victory. And if we learn anything from the SOPA/PIPA fight, we should learn how to do that again.
Aaron Swartz
    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 thefreedom to connect have not disappeared. The fire in those politicians’ eyes has not been put out.
Larry Downes
    Right now, it takes little more than a few key phrases—“open,” “censorship,” “privacy,” “break the Internet”—to hook the outrage of the Internet masses. But maintaining momentum requires something more sophisticated. And the accusations have to prove true. To become a permanent counterbalance to traditional governments, the bitroots movement will need to become more nuanced and more proactive. To avoid the very real possibility of mob rule, Internet activists must use their power responsibly. SOPA was a gimme.
Andrew McDiarmid
    What we saw in SOPA and PIPA was an attempt to make Internet policy from a narrow perspective, with little if any input from the community of people who best understand and care about how the Internet actually works. One of the key reasons we were successful in defeating these bills was that the community spoke up anyway. Millions of Internet users all over the country—indeed, all over the world—demanded that their concerns be heard. Imagine how much better Internet policymaking could work in the future if the public—and the experts—are included in the discussion from the start.
Kim Dotcom (founder of Megaupload)
    My main disagreement with the current state of the copyright debate is that the political balance is tilted too much in favor of content owners to the detriment of Internet innovation. Hollywood and the United States seem to be picking and choosing who they like and don’t like and that does not provide for the fairness, due process, and predictability that dual use technology companies like Megaupload need to grow and thrive. I believe it would be better for society to allow breathing room for Internet innovation. This case is at its core not about a criminal issue but rather an economics and political debate that is better suited to be dealt with in Congress.
Aaron Swartz
    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.

PART 1
THE WORLD BEFORE SOPA/PIPA
    It’s appropriate to read the SOPA/PIPA battle in the broader context of ongoing debates over copyright policy, access to information, and the freedom of expression—both online and off. In the pieces that follow, several contributors to Hacking Politics help set the table for the SOPA/PIPA fight. Activist and author Cory Doctorow discusses the long history