Winding Down Our Latest Greenhouse Panel: The Lessons Learned From SOPA/PIPA

from the past-is-prologue dept

Ten years ago a coalition of strange bedfellows came together to thwart one of the most problematic pieces of legislation in tech policy history. In the process they made history, rekindled waning optimism about the health of democratic process, forged longstanding new alliances across activism, politics, academia, and industry, and redefined what's possible in the tech policy arena and the halls of Congress. Not bad for a day's work.

Their motivation was SOPA/PIPA, a ham-fisted attempt to impose a draconian expansion to the nation's copyright laws that experts warned would restrict speech, stifle innovation, and curtail the growth of numerous online communities. The bill crafted an extrajudicial process with contours dictated not by experts, the public, or democratic process, but by entertainment industry lawyers. Thwarting its passage required a unique fusion of DC veterans well-versed in the machinery of Congress, academics with a vast understanding of the issues at hand, and younger activists employing fresh tactics in the fight for an open internet.

The result was not only a high watermark in online activism, the lessons learned during the experience will inform coalition building and activism for decades to come. Many of the experts, industry leaders, and politicians who experienced the battle first hand were kind enough to share their thoughts on the experience. Their contributions are outlined here, in case you missed any:

Again, we'd like to extend our immense appreciation to contributors of our latest roundtable, live panel participants, and Techdirt readers, and we hope these conversations have provided value to internet policymakers and everyday internet users alike.

Filed Under: copyright, greenhouse, sopa

From The Revolt Against SOPA To The EU's Upload Filters

from the copyright-policy dept

Register now for TODAY's online event featuring Rep. Zoe Lofgren »

From the European perspective, the revolt against SOPA that happened 10 years ago is a somewhat distant memory. During the past 10 years we have seen two more inflection points in the fight against excessive copyright enforcement: the successful fight against ACTA in 2012 that was directly inspired by the success against SOPA earlier that year and — much more recently — the fight against upload filters that unfolded between 2016 and 2019 in the context of the EU copyright reform. 

In this post I will trace the lineage of the struggle against excessive copyright enforcement from the revolt against SOPA all the way to the outcome of the EU copyright reform that was enacted in 2019.

From SOPA to ACTA

There can be no doubt that SOPA — had it been enacted — would have had massive consequences for internet users around the globe. While formally a proposal for legislation in the US, it would have changed the operating rules for platforms that are part of the online fabric for most of the global population. Much like the rules of the DCMA and Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act are underpinning copyright enforcement and content moderation around the globe, SOPA would have been applied globally. 

This is partially due to the fact that the platforms targeted by the proposal are primarily based in the US, but also because platforms that operate on a global scale have incentives to comply with rules that apply in sufficiently large markets, which means that regulatory regimes are often exported well beyond the jurisdictions where they have been originally enacted.

Seen in this light, the successful revolt against SOPA was as much a win for internet users outside of the US as it was for users in the US. But for internet users and activists in Europe, it also provided the inspiration for their fight against ACTA — the Anti Counterfeiting Trade Agreement that was negotiated from 2007 through 2010 by the European Union, the US, Switzerland, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Mexico, Singapore, Morocco, Japan, and South Korea.

In parallel to the protests against SOPA, the EU and the individual EU member states geared up to sign the final ACTA agreement. The protests against ACTA in Europe erupted when — in an act of incredibly poor timing — the Polish government announced on the 18th of January 2012 that it would sign ACTA. 

This moment unleashed a series of protests that took place both online and offline — in the form of sizable demonstrations in a number of EU member states. The protests that continued throughout the spring of 2012 ultimately lead to the rejection of ACTA by the European Parliament on the 4th of July 2012, effectively killing ACTA less than half a year after SOPA had been defeated.

While unfolding in different political venues, the mobilizations against SOPA/PIPA and ACTA share an important characteristic. Both were directed against measures that were extremely one-sided: Both SOPA and ACTA bundled right holder demands for stronger — or rather excessive — copyright enforcement into legislative measures that did not contain any other elements.

In both cases a central element was the desire to enlist Internet Service Providers as copyright enforcers. This meant that the mobilization against these measures could rally around a very simple political demand — to stop these measures from being adopted. In both cases the widespread opposition from internet users and platforms (both commercial and non-profit) managed to build up enough political power to achieve this well defined goal. 

From ACTA to Uploadfilters

With ACTA and SOPA defeated, it took a while for rightholders to launch another attempt to gain additional enforcement powers. In the period between 2012 and 2015, rightholders in the EU started building a new case against online platforms and their users. Instead of targeting internet service providers which had been on the focus of the measures contained in the SOPA and ACTA proposals, this new case focussed on “user generated content” platforms, of which YouTube was the primary example.

Driven largely by the music industry — but supported by organised rightholders from across the spectrum — European rightholders developed the "value gap" narrative that claimed that UGC platforms where generating value from the unauthorised upload of copyrighted content by their users that they failed to pass on to the legitimate recipients — the rightholders. To address this supposed “value gap” rightholders demanded legislative measures that would strip UGC platforms of the liability privileges that shield them from legal responsibility for content uploaded by their users. 

These liability limitations established by the 2001 E-Commerce directive that ensure that platforms are not liable for content uploaded by their users as long as they follow a notice and takedown procedure became the main target of the rightholder lobby which managed to convince the EU Commission to include a proposal to make large UGC platforms directly liable for any content uploaded by their users in its proposal for a Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market that was unveiled in the fall of 2016. 

Article 13 of the Commission proposal contained language that would have required large UGC platforms to "take measures to ensure the functioning of agreements concluded with rightholders for the use of their works or other subject-matter or to prevent the availability on their services of works or other subject-matter identified by rightholders through the cooperation with the service providers." 

In other words Article 13 — as proposed — would have required platforms to either conclude licensing agreements with rightholders for all content uploaded by their users — an impossible demand — or to block uploads of works identified by rightholders. 

Digital and civil rights advocates quickly identified the provisions in Article 13 as the most problematic aspect of the Commission's proposal for the CDSM directive and started campaigning against what — in their eyes – amounted to the introduction of mandatory upload filters in the EU. 

The campaign to stop upload filters and to delete Article 13 that took shape over the following two and a half years recalled many aspects of the previous fights against SOPA and ACTA. As in the revolt against SOPA, the coalition fighting to delete Article 13 included civil society advocacy groups, public interest organisations and a wide range of online platforms.

Similar to the mobilization against ACTA, the coalition managed to mobilize large groups of supporters both online — more than 5 million people signed a petition against Article 13 — and offline — in early 2019 more than 200.000 people across Europe took to the streets. The tools and tactics used by the opponents of Article 13 included many of the tools first deployed in the revolt against SOPA — ranging from website blackouts to mass email and social media campaigns directly targeting the responsible law makers.

But in the end the campaign to delete Article 13 failed to achieve its objective. During the final legislative showdown — the vote in the EU parliament in April 2019 — a proposal to have a separate vote on Article 13 of the directive was narrowly rejected with a margin of just five votes. As a result it never came to a yes-or-no vote on Article 13 and the European Parliament adopted the entire DSM directive including a heavily modified version of Article 13 with a clear majority.

Learning from Article 13

Even though it ultimately failed at achieving its objective, the campaign against Article 13 clearly showed excessive copyright enforcement measures have not lost their mobilization potential among internet users. So what was different here?

The biggest difference between the campaigns against SOPA and ACTA on the one side and Article 13 on the other side is that the latter was just one measure embedded in a much bigger copyright reform package — the proposed Copyright in the Digital Single Market directive. Where SOPA and ACTA immediately stood out in their one-sidedness and were thus much easier to discredit, the DSM directive was a multi-dimensional legislative package that contained a wide variety of measures that appealed to different sets of stakeholders. 

In addition to Articles 13 and 11 — a new neighboring right for press publishers — which reflected demands by organized rightholders, the directive also contained proposals for new copyright exceptions benefitting libraries, educational and research institutions and a number of measures strengthening the position of individual creators vis-a-vis publishers and other intermediaries. And while Article 11 and 13 were both highly controversial, these other measures enjoyed support from lawmakers across broad parts of the political spectrum.

As a result of this divide-and-conquer approach, support for the project of adopting the directive came from a diverse set of stakeholders who pushed to see "their" issues adopted. Meanwhile lawmakers (and the EU Member States) were bitterly divided between different camps supporting different elements of the directive while rejecting others. These divisions manifested themselves not along party lines but split all major political parties down the middle.

In this relatively unstable political climate there never was as clear majority for abandoning the overall project of adopting the directive and so the vast EU legislative apparatus did what it has been designed to do: step by step it pursued its objective towards producing compromise between the various political groups which ultimately resulted in the adoption of the directive at the very end of the legislative term. 

User rights as a by-product of the fight against upload filters?

While the final vote on the directive was very much perceived as an all or nothing decision — the proponents of Article 13 united under the "yes to copyright" banner while the opponents proclaimed to "save the internet" — a retrospective analysis of the adopted measures paints a very different picture. 

During the course of the legislative wrangling, Article 13 underwent significant changes to accommodate concerns expressed by its opponents. The Final version of Article 13 (now Article 17 after a renumbering of the provisions of the directive) is substantially different from the Commission's original proposal. And while it shares its two main elements — the removal of the general liability privilege for UGC platforms and a de-facto requirement to deploy upload filters — it has accumulated a number of substantial procedural and substantive user rights safeguards that have not been present in the original version. 

Even more so Article 17 has become a vehicle for harmonizing key user rights by making the previously optional exceptions for quotation, criticism, review, parody, pastiche and caricature mandatory in all EU Member States. In addition, it now imposes obligations on Member States to ensure that these rights can effectively be exercised by users of UGC platforms. All of these amount to tangible improvements for internet users in the EU (for platforms this picture is more complicated).

So while the effort to prevent the mandatory imposition of upload filters has clearly failed, the collision of massive SOPA style mobilisations with the EU’s compromise focussed legislative process may have created a rather unexpected outcome: the codification of important user rights and a framework for regulating the use of automated content moderation technologies that had were already in widespread use but so far deployed purely at the discretion of the online platforms.

As such, what had originally been perceived as a bitter loss breaking with the tradition of the earlier successes of the mobilisations against SOPA and ACTA, seems more and more like a win for internet users in an admittedly ugly disguise.

Paul Keller is Director of Policy at Open Future and President of the COMMUNIA association for the Public Domain where he coordinated the advocacy efforts related to the new EU copyright directive.

This Techdirt Greenhouse special edition is all about the 10 year anniversary of the fight that stopped SOPA. On January 26th at 1pm PT, we'll be hosting a live discussion with Rep. Zoe Lofgren and some open roundtable discussions about the legacy of that fight. Please register to attend.

Filed Under: acta, article 13, article 17, copyright, copyright directive, eu, sopa, upload filters

Did We Miss Our Best Chance At Regulating The Internet?

from the the-internet-has-changed dept

Register now for our online event featuring Rep. Zoe Lofgren »

In 2010 I was in a leadership role on the data science team at Grooveshark.com. These were the pre-Spotify days, and we were trying to transition customers away from elicit downloads to music streaming. Using the YouTube user-generated content model made a lot of sense. We theorized that if YouTube could democratize the distribution of video, allowing creators from all over the world to distribute their art on a speedy, frictionless platform, it only made sense that we could do the same for music. 

On the information products team, our goal was twofold. First, we aimed to discover trending, unknown artists worldwide and serve them up to record labels hungry for new talent. 

The second goal was to act as a connector between bands and brands so that artists and labels losing revenue could develop a brand-new channel for monetization. Eventually, we would be able to create affinity profiles on consumers across the globe. That’s something we bragged about back then. Now there’s a bit of shame associated with that type of information collection and rightly so. 

While indies were quick to license Grooveshark, major labels did not want to give up their gatekeeper status. We signed deals where we could and took down unlicensed music when notified, frequently beating YouTube’s response time. The majors didn’t want the royalties. They wanted to make sure that any artist with a new or innovative sound had to come up through their farm league.

Lawsuits weren’t new to Grooveshark. We’d been sued a handful of times in state or federal courts. Often, they were disposed of in summary judgments or settled, turning into the licensing deals that we had been asking for all along. 

But in November of 2011, Universal Music Group, along with Sony, Warner, and nine other labels, filed a lawsuit against the company and the employees themselves, including me and two junior employees. Generally, employees, especially non-founder, non-participating employees like us, would never be liable for the actions of their employer.

Still, because this was copyright infringement, the majors tried to pierce the corporate veil. They accused us of a combined $17 billion worth of copyright infringement. If found liable, I would have been on the hook for some $900 million that could not be discharged in bankruptcy and would be garnished from my earnings for the rest of my life. 

It was a transparent attempt at intimidating new employees and discouraging prospective employees from accepting a job at Grooveshark or any other fledgling tech company hoping to innovate in the music space. The majors had successfully shut down some 20+ startups before us, but we were well funded, growing quickly, and loved by our 20+ million users. Under the leadership of founders Sam Tarantino and the late Josh Greenberg, Grooveshark had survived every attempt previously made. 

I remain convinced that I was a party to that lawsuit for one reason and one reason only: I was going to be called as a witness in the House IP subcommittee's second “Sites & Parasites” hearing. I would have testified to the evidence that major labels were feeding erroneous information to DMCA takedown systems and using the court system to structure settlements that would line label coffers but whose proceeds would never make their way to the artists. 

Thus, they prioritized lawsuits over licensing deals. Knowing that no lawyer worth their weight in salt would volunteer a client for a testimony who is a party to a suit like that, I was served just as we negotiated my appearance before the committee. 

In the “Sites & Parasites” hearings, representatives from legacy media angled to pass the conveniently titled Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and its Senate sister bill, the Protect IP Act (PIPA). These bills would have given them a virtual veto on any tech platform that allowed users to upload their own content. 

Speeches, news articles, music, video, and even user comment sections were well within the boundaries of this legislation. The legacy content industries believed that this was their chance to constrain the Internet. So, they fought like it was existential. For Grooveshark, it was existential. Had the legislation been enacted, Grooveshark would have ceased to exist immediately. 

Though we were early into the fray, Grooveshark was only a minor player in the organizing efforts. The RIAA and MPAA were eventually thwarted when Internet creators, activists, and users alike organized to defend themselves, voluntarily blacking out some of the most significant websites on the Internet, and sending so many emails to congressional accounts that it resulted in the first email server outage in congressional history. 

Soon after that, SOPA and PIPA were shelved, Spotify sold a portion of itself to the major labels, and we entered a period of detente. 

Though it took two more years, that lawsuit did end up taking Grooveshark down. $150,000 per month in legal bills will bleed a startup dry, and having big enemies doesn’t inspire the fundraising they’d need to keep the venture growing. I resigned from my position in 2012, and the case against me was settled shortly after. 

Some may argue that this was the preferable outcome. Major labels now embrace streaming. For better or worse, they participate in the profits of artist merchandise sales, live performance, and other exotic licensing opportunities. I’ve harbored a decade-long resentment against Spotify, but even I can’t argue with the amount of access to new and diverse music that my subscription delivers. 

As I look back on all the startups that were cut down, the capital squandered, and the artists whose window for global exposure narrowed to just a handful of labels again, I find myself wondering: what did we accomplish in killing SOPA and PIPA?

We thwarted a bill that would have resulted in the most powerful legacy industries on the planet securing a veto on any new web 2.0 technology. We made the Internet safe for entrepreneurs. We protected the innovation sandbox that was the safe harbors, and we helped create hundreds of billions of dollars in new business opportunities and the jobs that went along with them. 

We ensured that the Internet would remain a haven for free speech, popular or not, for another generation. 

Still, I can’t help myself from wondering: could we have created a system that allowed for sensible regulation, thus pre-empting the maleficence of today’s internet behemoths? Was that our chance? Was that even within the deal space? 

The negotiators from tech were not organized for a fight such as the one brought to their doorstep in 2010. You can draw a straight line from SOPA to the well-armed giants of tech now, thwarting regulation of any kind, sensible or not. That was their wake up call, and wake up they did.

Now the Internet companies are the monied gatekeepers and we are further away from sensible regulation than ever before. Recent disclosures from Facebook insiders suggest that polarizing the body politic is not just about clicks. It’s also a legislative strategy. The more polarized our legislative bodies, the less likely they will be to agree on any reform. Still, if I have to choose a side again today, I would not choose the side of censorship. 

The Internet remains our best weapon in the fight against tyranny and the suppression of ideas. When they ban books in Texas schools, enterprising students will find them online. When they close polling locations in under-represented neighborhoods, the Internet will organize carpools. When governments silence public figures and force them into hiding for exposing high-ranking officials, the Internet will carry her message across the globe. 

The Internet does not solve any of these problems. It is merely a tool. Each of us decides if we will use it to divide or unite. Though there may be a price to pay for free speech, the price is far greater if forced to go without it.

Paul Geller is the founder of Channelshift

This Techdirt Greenhouse special edition is all about the 10 year anniversary of the fight that stopped SOPA. On January 26th at 1pm PT, we'll be hosting a live discussion with Rep. Zoe Lofgren and some open roundtable discussions about the legacy of that fight. Please register to attend.

Filed Under: copyright, interent, intimidation, lawsuits, pipa, regulations, sopa
Companies: grooveshark

Speak Up: Reflecting On The SOPA Debate From Inside The Capitol

from the participatory-democracy dept

Register now for our online event featuring the author of this post, Rep. Zoe Lofgren »

On December 16, 2011, more than a decade ago, I had just concluded one of the longest Committee markups during my time in Congress. After hours and hours debating the future of the internet, I took to my website to echo the call to action coming from many, including writers at Techdirt:

“If you are opposed to SOPA, speak up. You can place a phone call to your Member of Congress' D.C. office and express your opposition… Members of Congress face the voters of their districts they represent every other year at election time. The opinions of the people who live in the districts they represent matter to a Member of Congress a very great deal.”

During that long Judiciary Committee markup, a few of my colleagues from both parties joined me in offering amendments. I refused to allow unanimous consent to waive the reading of the bill — that meant the clerk read aloud the entire measure, which took considerable time. Together, we were able to delay consideration of the bill in Committee so that final action would trail over to January. This delay allowed for organizing against the measure. Internet activists, including the late Aaron Swartz, began organizing an internet-based public outcry. I was in touch with him and others as those plans progressed.

The mass public outcry to Congressional offices was unprecedented. When Marsha Blackburn and others went to the House Floor to ask that they be removed as co-sponsors of the bill, it was obvious that SOPA was dead.

As I wrote on Reddit:

“I was inspired that millions of Americans cared enough about freedom to contact their elected Representatives… Your opposition to SOPA/PIPA had nothing to do with political parties and everything to do with preserving free expression on the internet.”

The public opposition that culminated in the SOPA blackout of January 2012 led to the bill being pulled from any further consideration. It would have irrevocably changed not only copyright law, but the architecture of the internet.

Since then, there is no doubt that the mood of the public debate and the pervasive narrative about the internet has changed. Ten years ago, the conventional wisdom about everything going online was perhaps too naïve – with some people only seeing the transformative possibilities while overlooking the more complicated realities, which today include the spread of disinformation, privacy and data abuses, and more.

Yet, I also worry when the focus is solely on the downsides and worst-case scenarios of online platforms and services. We shouldn’t take for granted that so much of humanity’s knowledge is now literally at our fingertips. We are all free to write a blog post like this and share it quickly and easily with our friends, family, and/or the entire world – without getting the permission of some big company, let alone the government. The fight that was won in 2012 was not for naught. The internet is free and open in part because millions of Americans who opposed SOPA spoke out.

Ultimately, the SOPA debate was about openness versus centralization and control. Openness won. That struggle hasn’t gone away. Every year, we see renewed efforts to use the law to lock down online platforms and ecosystems. Of course, targeted regulation is sometimes necessary, but the debates in Washington often fall into familiar patterns. During the SOPA fight, many pretended that the only online stakeholders who matter are the tech companies themselves, as opposed to their users and the larger platform ecosystems. We’ve seen that same message repeated more than once since. That’s why, ten years later, my best reflection from the fight over SOPA is that we must encourage everyday internet users to keep speaking up in collective defense of our digital rights.

Rep. Zoe Lofgren has been a Democratic member of the United States House of Representatives since 1995. She represents the 19th District of California, based in the “Capital of Silicon Valley,” San Jose, and the Santa Clara Valley.

This Techdirt Greenhouse special edition is all about the 10 year anniversary of the fight that stopped SOPA. On January 26th at 1pm PT, we'll be hosting a live discussion with Rep. Zoe Lofgren and some open roundtable discussions about the legacy of that fight. Please register to attend.

Filed Under: centralization, copyright, internet, openness, sopa, speaking up

The Internet Infrastructure's SOPA/PIPA Silver Lining

from the it-brought-people-together dept

Register now for our online event featuring Rep. Zoe Lofgren »

Ten years ago a massive, digital grassroots movement defeated the Stop Online Piracy Act in the House, and its Senate companion the Protect IP Act (SOPA/PIPA). Looking back, this signal victory drove an even more important outcome–the birth of a large wave of Internet activism organizations, including our own Internet Infrastructure Coalition (i2Coalition), a new, unified, independent voice for Internet infrastructure providers. 

Our story began in 2011 when I led operations for a web hosting company called ServInt. My future co-founder of the i2Coalition David Snead, was our outsourced General Counsel. He and I became alarmed about the damaging impact on the Internet infrastructure layer of a little-known bill, the Combating Online Infringement, and Counterfeits Act, or COICA, introduced by Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT). 

While well-intentioned to combat infringement by foreign “rogue” websites, the bill would have allowed for the mass blocking of websites by the Department of Justice without due process, on the say so of intellectual property holders. We met with Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) and his staff to seek advice about how to have a voice in the COICA debate. Their answer was direct : “get more of you.” 

At that point, it seemed like just a handful of small Internet infrastructure enterprises were even aware of COICA. We realized that we needed to start a grassroots movement.

We began intensive outreach to the Internet infrastructure community online and offline at conferences, meetings, and events, which led to formation of the “Save Hosting Coalition.”We launched letter writing campaigns to explain our deep concerns to legislators in Congress, which continued when SOPA/PIPA eventually superseded COICA. 

Fortunately, as our group worked to build a social media campaign and to connect with legislators, we found that we were no longer alone. The Consumer Technology Association, known then as the Consumer Electronics Association, had an active lobbying team who invited us to join them in their efforts to convince Congress of the dangers of SOPA/PIPA.

This broader collaboration became a turning point when we realized the crucial nature of our role in the SOPA/PIPA debate. As Internet infrastructure providers, we were best positioned to explain to policymakers how the technology works and that their well-intentioned proposals to fix problems actually would undermine the functioning of the Internet ecosystem. We showed that proposed SOPA/PIPA technical provisions would make it impossible for small and medium-sized Internet infrastructure businesses to continue operating at scale.

Our campaign against SOPA/PIPA culminated in our decisive conversation with Senator Jerry Moran (R-KS) and Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian, which helped convince Senator Moran to join Senator Wyden in a bipartisan hold on PIPA in the Senate. This procedural move froze Senate action for a bit, and gave the time for our new friends at Reddit and Fight for the Future to organize the Internet Blackout Day, which shut down 115,000 sites and galvanized public support for stopping the bills. We aided in the coordination of this vital day, which effectively stopped SOPA/PIPA in its tracks.

The power of facts made the difference in our collective victory. Concerned technology companies explained with one voice how the bills would destroy Internet infrastructure operations. Aligning with the CTA enabled a strong and unified advocacy campaign. Consequently, minds changed in Congress because members and staff heard rational arguments and listened to our concerns.

The SOPA/PIPA legislative debate made clear the ongoing threat of uninformed Internet policy. We saw the need for continued educational advocacy from our Internet infrastructure provider vantage point. 

Four companies in the Save Hosting Coalition (Rackspace, cPanel, Endurance (now Newfold Digital), and Softlayer) invested to keep our group going. On July 25th, 2012, we formally launched the Internet Infrastructure Coalition (i2Coalition) with 42 members with a mission to ensure that Internet infrastructure providers are at the table helping to solve future Internet policy problems. 

We believed then, as we do now, that Internet policy solutions should be scaled appropriately without creating barriers for new, small entrants in the infrastructure layer, be they college students innovating in their dorm rooms, or entrepreneurs fulfilling a need. Policymakers must understand the technology underlying all these small digital businesses to avoid laws and regulations that inadvertently would disrupt their functioning, ultimately limiting incentives for future innovation and market entry

We proudly reflect on our strong work a decade ago to educate Congress about how SOPA/PIPA would impair the Internet ecosystem. That successful fight led to the i2Coaltion’s formation, and our story is not unique. The most important outgrowth of the SOPA/PIPA saga turned out to be the creation of permanent organizations like ours, set up to defend Internet innovation.

There will always be a need for more Internet education for legislators and regulators, and there will always be somebody coming out with another SOPA/PIPA-like proposal. The Internet needs permanent voices ready to address both.

As we celebrate the i2Coalition’s 10 year anniversary in 2022, we know our work is always evolving. The Internet infrastructure industry today faces a diverse set of challenges involving security, safety, privacy, and more. We face many of the same intermediary liability focused challenges that we had when we started, particularly while engaging in complex issues such as Section 230 reform in the United States and the Digital Services Act in the EU. 

We need to keep learning together and empowering alliances with other like-minded stakeholders, to ensure that an educated appreciation of the nuts and bolts of how the Internet works informs policy making fully. At the i2Coalition we are as excited as ever about the digital future, and look forward to continuing to be the voice for the multitudes of businesses that build the Internet. 

Christian Dawson is the Co-Founder of the Internet Infrastructure Coalition (i2Coalition) where he works to make the Internet a better, safer place for the businesses that make up the Cloud.

This Techdirt Greenhouse special edition is all about the 10 year anniversary of the fight that stopped SOPA. On January 26th at 1pm PT, we'll be hosting a live discussion with Rep. Zoe Lofgren and some open roundtable discussions about the legacy of that fight. Please register to attend.

Filed Under: activism, cloud, copyright, infrastructure, internet infrastructure, lobbying, policy, sopa

The SOPA Fight Reminds Us Of The Internet's Power And Usefulness

from the don't-let-it-get-taken-away dept

Ten years ago this week, I watched my computer screen as much of the Internet slowly switched off. Over a hundred thousand websites, including that of our predecessor organization CEA, were going dark in a last-ditch protest of a House bill called the “Stop Online Piracy Act” (SOPA) and its Senate counterpart, the “Protect IP Act” (PIPA).

These bills were backed by large content companies concerned that the Internet would disrupt their longstanding business models. While we sympathized with their concerns about unauthorized downloading, we could not agree with their proposed solution: allowing content owners to easily "take down" entire websites, without due process or notification, if they claimed that the site hosted unauthorized content.

If these bills had passed, the consequences for the Internet would have been devastating. Any website featuring third-party content, including libraries and community bulletin boards, would have been vulnerable to sudden and permanent removal after a single complaint. Sites would vanish and have little recourse. Bad actors would run rampant, using the SOPA-PIPA process to harass competitors and censor opposing viewpoints.

Opposition to SOPA-PIPA had been slowly growing. A strange-bedfellows coalition ranging from the Electronic Frontier Foundation to the Heritage Foundation was opposing the bills. Artists like Amanda Palmer and OKGO denounced the bills’ impacts on creativity. A group of startup founders including Alexis Ohanian, Micah Shaffer, and Christian Dawson walked the Capitol meeting with legislators, many of whom had never previously been face-to-face with an internet entrepreneur. And at the 2012 CES, Republican Rep. Darrell Issa and Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden stood together and declared they would do anything in their power to stop the bills.

But this opposition, vigorous as it was, shrank in comparison to the bills’ support. SOPA and PIPA were backed by dozens of DC's biggest players, including the Motion Picture Association, the Recording Industry Association, and the powerful US Chamber of Commerce. SOPA had dozens of Congressional sponsors, including Judiciary Committee Chairman Lamar Smith.

In the Senate, PIPA sailed unanimously through the Judiciary Committee and Majority Leader Reid announced that he planned to bring the bill to the floor for a vote. By normal DC rules, the game was over and the bills were sure to pass.

But the Internet blackout drew public attention, and the tide quickly turned as Americans began calling and emailing their members of Congress. In total, more than 14 million Americans contacted their lawmakers to protest the legislation. I remember sitting in a legislator’s office the morning after the blackout and watching in sincere astonishment as the phone rang off the hook.

The impact was swift, as legislators rushed to take their names off the bills. For the first time, policymakers realized that the Internet wasn’t some fringe domain for computer geeks, it was a central and treasured element of their constituents' daily lives. Within a week, SOPA and PIPA had been pulled from consideration in the House and Senate.

The death of SOPA/PIPA unleashed a Cambrian Explosion of online innovation. Companies like Instagram, Tinder Slack, Patreon, and thousands of others changed the way we work, play, and live. Anyone who attended CES 2022 could not help but see the extraordinary dynamism and competition that currently exists in the technology industry.

The content industry also thrived once they stopped treating the internet as an enemy and began treating it as an asset. While content companies once declared that ”you can’t compete with free,” in the wake of SOPA-PIPA they pivoted to offering well-designed, consumer-friendly services at reasonable prices. 

According to the RIAA, U.S. recorded music revenues grew 9.2% in 2020, with 83% of the revenue coming from Internet streaming. The movie industry has seen similar gains, with global streaming video revenue projected to hit $94 billion by 2025. Meanwhile, independent creators used new internet platforms to present their work directly to fans without having to go through gatekeepers or intermediaries.

Most importantly, the post-SOPA-PIPA Internet has proven to be the most impactful communications platform in human history. On May 25, 2020, 17-year-old Darnell Frazier used her smartphone to document the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer. Posted to Facebook, this video kicked off an ongoing national conversation on race and injustice.

Similarly, in 2017 women took to the Internet to respond to sexual assault allegations against Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein and describe their own experiences under the hashtag #MeToo. Widespread media coverage changed the way our society responds to sexual harassment. For the first time, regular people have been empowered to speak to millions on important issues, and they are using the power to change society for the better.

Over the last decade, we have learned many lessons. We have learned that the Internet, while it provides tremendous benefits, is not perfect. That is why we need clear federal guidelines in areas like online privacy and digital currencies that protect consumers and promote innovation.

We have learned that Americans continue to care passionately about the Internet. Over the last two years during COVID, millions have gone online to work, educate their children, access health care, keep in touch with loved ones, and arrange delivery of critical goods. No wonder online companies rank highly in surveys of America’s most-loved brands.

However, the SOPA-PIPA fight is not over. In “Groundhog Day” fashion, threats to the free and open Internet are reemerging. Policymakers are threatening to increase government control over Internet speech, and impose other limitations that would harm online companies and small businesses.

Many of those pushing today’s “anti-tech” narrative are the same disgruntled competitors and legacy industries that engineered SOPA-PIPA. In fact, some broadcasters and content companies are even opposing an eminently qualified FCC nominee, Gigi Sohn, because of her correct and pro-consumer opposition to SOPA-PIPA a decade ago

Congress is now considering legislation that would eliminate products like Google Docs and Amazon Prime. These services are woven into the lives of millions who rely on them to surmount the difficulties of COVID. If Congress breaks these services, the reaction from voters could make the SOPA-PIPA earthquake look like a mild tremor. Similarly, you could predict a SOPA-PIPA-type backlash if the government places unreasonable restrictions on the 46 million Americans who own digital assets.

A few weeks after SOPA-PIPA died, I was ordering coffee when the barista pointed at the “STOP SOPA” sticker on my laptop. “I emailed my member of Congress about that, and it worked…It was the first time I felt I could actually change things in Washington,” he said.

Thankfully, ten years after SOPA-PIPA, the Internet’s ability to empower American expression and innovation is only just beginning.

Michael Petricone is the Senior VP, Government Affairs, at the Consumer Technology Association.

This Techdirt Greenhouse special edition is all about the 10 year anniversary of the fight that stopped SOPA. On January 26th at 1pm PT, we'll be hosting a live discussion with Rep. Zoe Lofgren and some open roundtable discussions about the legacy of that fight. Please register to attend.

Filed Under: activism, copyright, innovation, internet, open internet, sopa