What Do MC Hammer & Tim Berners-Lee Have In Common? They Both Hate SOPA/PIPA

from the web-inventor-says-don't-touch-this-internet dept

As SOPA/PIPA supporters continue to insist that there's either no anti-SOPA/PIPA sentiment, or that it's just coming from Google, every day we see more and more evidence that that's changing. Let's start with Tim Berners-Lee -- the inventor of the web. And he's now come out against SOPA/PIPA. Then we've got MC Hammer, the rapper-turned-entrepreneur, who has been telling his 2.5 million Twitter followers to protest SOPA as well, noting that it would be "a terrible bill for writers, vloggers, artists, and musicians." Indeed. That's part of this debate that often gets overlooked. The big old gatekeepers like to pretend this is about helping the artists, but plenty of artists -- including Hammer -- recognize that what helps them is an open internet on which it's easy to build new platforms and services. A locked down internet, where liability and expensive compliance costs are dumped on innovative companies won't help artists at all. Instead, it will sink innovation by making it too risky. Either way, when you have such a diverse group of folks all coming out against the bill, how much longer can SOPA/PIPA supporters pretend there aren't any criticisms of the bill?

Filed Under: mc hammer, pipa, protect ip, sopa, tim berners-lee