Strong Opinions @marksbirch

yancey:

Right now I, along with many of my peers in the tech community, am a single-issue voter: the defeat of the Stop Online Piracy Act. There is no legislative action more important to the future of the web and our society than its defeat.

SOPA will cut off at the knees the innovations in technology, commerce, communication, and free expression that we have seen via the web. It will throttle the most promising avenues of the world economy and human communication. And it will do these things so Hollywood can make a buck when someone downloads Saw IV.

I believe in copyright. My company Kickstarter is built to foster the creation of art, and through it more than a million people from around the world have contributed over $100 million in support of the arts, creativity, and entrepreneurship. I’ve committed my life to helping artists get paid. But my belief in copyright does not supersede my belief in innovation, privacy, and due process.

This weekend I participated in a meeting of various figures in the NY tech community to discuss how to make our voices heard this week as the bill gets marked up by the House Judiciary Committee. A congresswoman joined the call and she remarked that she had never seen the MPAA fight for something as hard as they are fighting for SOPA.

Hollywood is the main proponent of this bill and they are well-organized. They have lobbying arms, fundraisers, and unions. They are well-versed in the tradition of currying favor and they are a longtime favorite of Washington.

The tech community is at a severe disadvantage. We have a whole universe measured in traffic, likes, reblogs, retweets, and visitors. We are incredibly skilled at organizing and mobilizing people. But internet-wise Washington lives in 2004: politicians can’t begin to fathom the profound ways the web has reconfigured society across class, education, and race, and they view its structure and morals as irrelevant. Our skills have absolutely no meaning when it comes to the political process.

As entrepreneurs, coders, and technologists we are born disruptors, misfits, and tinkerers. We’re the people who build their own apple carts rather than settle for the one that’s there. We’re creating jobs and new industries. The vernacular of Washington and its means of communication — lobbying, trade groups, coalitions, etc — are foreign to us. This is not our turf.

We’re doing our best to learn. Tumblr generated 90,000 phone calls to congress a few weeks ago with its clever black-out campaign. But there needs to be more. This week we’re making a new push via FightfortheFuture.org to make clear to Washington that this bill has deep repercussions for our entire society.

SOPA is an enormous mistake that would dramatically change our future for the worst. It would have the United States legalize the same forms of web monitoring and censorship used in China. It would have the United States throttle the incredible growth and innovation in the tech sector at the exact moment we need it most.

This is not a small issue. This is a generational issue. As a cofounder of a small but growing company of 35 people and a firm believer in the importance of a free and unregulated internet, I ask for everyone’s help in defeating this bill. Thanks.

SOPA is THE most invasive legislation ever produced by Congress in regards to regulating the Internet.  Read the rest of this post and actively participate in the defeat of this bill.  Our collective future depends on it.