Hacking Politics: How Geeks, Progressives, the Tea Party, Gamers, Anarchists, and Suits Teamed Up to Defeat SOPA and Save the Internet (59 page)

There’s another structural respect in which the SOPA effort was unusual. There were two distinct power nodes/monetary centers of gravity lined up on opposing sides of the legislation: Big Content (Hollywood, the recording industry, and the like) on one hand and Silicon Valley on the other. Many politicians—especially Democrats, but a few powerful Republicans like Lamar Smith—have traditionally been caught in Hollywood’s gravitational field. Silicon Valley, because it’s younger and—for better or worse—has had a cultural antipathy towards engaging with Washington, D.C., claimed hooks in fewer politicians at the outset of the SOPA fight. But what it did have was the potential, and eventually concrete, support of something like 99% of the rank-and-file Americans who would come to pay attention to the issue. Hollywood is always whining about its diminishing profits (which strikes me as a questionable lobbying strategy in our money-obsessed political system); meanwhile Silicon Valley is an ascendant power center that demonstrated a newfound
willingness to engage in lobbying and politicking over the course of the SOPA effort.

At a risk of mixing metaphors: if one were a free radical in this scenario—as most Republicans were—it’s not a hard political calculus to determine which node to associate with: zip as fast as possible towards the one that has a lot of money, is still on the rise, and has the esteem of 99% of the voters. Uncommitted Republicans lined up against SOPA—even nutty Michele Bachmann issued an important, early, oppositional statement—and several Republican sponsors withdrew their support; key Democrats continued to back the legislation out of fear of alienating their traditional allies in Hollywood, or out of genuine allegiance to the bill’s philosophical underpinnings.

Today the Republicans are making a play to become the Party of Silicon Valley, with Congressman Darrell Issa helming the charge. A sub-caucus of the GOP called the Republican Study Committee recently went so far as to issue a scathing report about the impact of maximalist copyright enforcement on the American economy. (Though backlash from Big Content spooked them into withdrawing the paper, and its author has since been terminated.)

SOPA was an earthquake, revealing new fault lines that will remain on the map for some time to come, and compelling a shelf to fall off of the traditional copyright maximalist consensus: we’re not likely to see another abrupt shift of that magnitude anytime soon, but we’re tending towards a new equilibrium in that political space wherein considerations about Internet freedom and intellectual property rights abut one another.

Yet there are indeed some respects in which lessons learned during the SOPA effort can be applied to other organizing.

Many of the tools and mini-campaigns that activists built during the fight can be used in support of other causes or inspire new tactics. The game-ification of activism was incredibly useful: the self-censor tool that FFTF developed, the commitment from Wyden to read names on the floor of the Senate, and other tools and actions increased the impetus for people to contact Congress. They imbued the rote “clicktivism” with an extra increment of meaning—and they were fun—making it more likely that people would take part and encourage others to do the same. There was also something important happening on the back-end of those constituent contacts that’s a bit esoteric, but worth mentioning: Demand Progress (namely, Aaron Swartz) built a tool which we shared with Fight for the Future that generated actual emails to Congress each time somebody signed up on one of our petition or email pages. Many activist organizations simply deliver PDFs with lists of names to Capitol Hill offices (frequently with email addresses and complete street addresses scrubbed out). Sending discrete emails carries more weight, as each individual note compels the office to work a bit harder, forcing staffers to log the contact and draft and send a response, thereby imparting a deeper sense that the emailer is a real, live constituent. I’ve spoken with dozens of lawmakers and staffers at all levels of governance, and they adhere to this point without exception. So it may seem wonky, but I regularly evangelize on this point.

The ideological left and the right came together to win this fight, and that sort of cross-partisan coalition is likely to form with increasing frequency: power structures in Washington have become so stagnant and corrupt that the relevant political divide is less and less so that between the two major parties—whose leaders are fairly consistent advocates for bailouts for the wealthy, perpetual warfare, diminished civil liberties—but between those who have institutional power and all of the rest of us.

There are sharp, important, ideological divides about the role of the state in the economy, the need for a social safety net, and the like. But there are important points of solidarity that should not be obscured by party stripe or reductionist ideological labels: nobody likes corporate welfare (as the left would call it) or rent-seeking (as it’s named by the right) unless one is among those insiders directly benefitting from said largess. The left and right came together to fight against the bank bailouts and to audit the Federal Reserve. There’s a substantial antiwar, pro-civil liberties flank that identifies as conservative/libertarian. There’s solidarity in support of ending the war on drugs and instituting other criminal justice reforms.

And to some extent, the left and right can fight side-by-side in service of that ultimate goal of devising an election funding structure that makes politicians accountable to voters and not to the interests of wealthy campaign financiers. It shocks many of my allies on the left who’ve proved easy prey to propaganda about the right, but polls consistently show that upwards of two-thirds of Republicans agree that the system of private money that we use fund elections has a corrupting influence on politics, and want to reduce its import and impact. Institutional heavyweights serve as their gatekeepers. Reformers must devise an end run around them and conspire with the conservative rank-and-file.

With that we arrive at my ultimate hope, explicated in more detail in Lawrence Lessig’s excellent contribution towards the end of this book: that the platforms that helped kill SOPA will, out of an enlightened self-interest or a noblesse oblige (that’s hopefully concomitant with their newfound political power), facilitate activism towards the end of implementing a bottom-up, networked, democratic system of financing elections and thereby help us reclaim a republic wherein lawmakers are accountable to the electorate rather than concentrated private capital. There are tremendous differences between the Left and Right, but let’s agree that we should get to duke them out on a level playing field—rather than one whereon the corporatists have the high ground on all of the rest of us.

In this chapter, several authors pick up on themes that are threaded throughout this book, and suggest directions in which we might steer the energy and redeploy some of the tools and tactics that made the defeats of SOPA and PIPA possible. Congressman Ron Paul speaks to the importance of Internet freedom for libertarians; Erin McKeown issues a call-to-arms to artists; Brad Burnham writes on the importance to innovate, from the perspective of a venture capitialist; Marvin Ammori writes of changing understandings of free speech rights as the public sphere relies ever more heavily on privately-owned online platforms; Cory Doctorow offers one (of many) potential paths forward for copyright reform; Lawrence Lessig urges those who were active in the SOPA/PIPA fight to muster once more, to tackle the sorts of institutional corruption that allowed those bills to progress as far as they did
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Former Congressman Ron Paul of Texas enjoys a national reputation as a premier advocate for liberty in politics. Dr. Paul was and is a leading spokesman in Washington for limited constitutional government, low taxes, free markets, and a return to sound monetary policies based on commodity-backed currency. He is known among both his colleagues in Congress and his constituents for his consistent voting record in the House of Representatives: Paul never voted for legislation unless he determined the proposed measure was expressly authorized by the Constitution. In the words of former Treasury Secretary William Simon, Paul was the “one exception to the Gang of 535” on Capitol Hill
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The liberty movement has undergone tremendous growth over the last few years, aided in large part by the Internet revolution. Today, thanks to the Internet, it is easier than ever before for liberty activists to spread news and other information regarding the evils of government power and the benefits of freedom. For the first time in human history, supporters of liberty around the world can share information across borders quickly and cheaply. Without the filter of government censors, this information emboldens millions to question governments and promote liberty.

In America, websites like the Drudge Report and
LewRockwell.com
have broken the mainstream media’s de facto monopoly on news and information, enabling the widespread dissemination of stories concerning government malfeasance. Before the Internet revolution, many of these stories would have been untold by state-loving, establishment reporters eager to protect their access to power. The Internet also has made it possible for websites like
Mises.org
to spread knowledge of the freedom philosophy across the globe. Until the late 1990s, individuals interested in Austrian economics, U.S. constitutional history, and libertarian philosophy had to spend hours scouring used book stores or the back pages of obscure libertarian periodicals to find the great works of Mises, Rothbard, Hayek, and other giants of liberty. Local libraries and universities ignored libertarian politics and economics.

Today, however, the greatest classics of libertarian thought, libertarian philosophy, and libertarian economics are available instantly to anyone with Internet access.

The Internet also has enabled individuals in the liberty movement to increase their political effectiveness and thus have a major impact on American politics. My 2008 and 2012 presidential campaigns are the most obvious example of how liberty activists use the Internet to spread the message of liberty. Many of my supporters first heard about my campaign via YouTube or other online videos of my speeches and campaign events.

These converts quickly began sharing information with others. They also used the Internet to coordinate activities and events organically, without any
centralized coordination with my official campaign. This radical, decentralized, organic support for my campaigns—with the Internet serving as the primary organizing tool—was an incredible demonstration of true “grassroots” organizing. This army of mostly young, Internet savvy activists is what enabled my campaigns to overcome the deeply biased mainstream media’s virtual blackout, allowing my campaign to outperform several better-funded candidates.

Perhaps the signature issue of my political career has been exposing the ways in which the U.S. Federal Reserve Bank enables the growth of the warfare-welfare state and erodes the American people’s standard of living. For years, our efforts to inform the American public about the Fed’s unchecked power were blocked by self-appointed academic and media gatekeepers, who considered criticism of the Fed outside the bounds of acceptable discourse. Thanks to the Internet revolution, however, these gatekeepers have lost their power to relegate issues like monetary policy to the margins of political discussion. As a result, the Federal Reserve has become a major political issue for the first time in American history.

Clearly the Internet can serve as a means for advancing liberty only to the extent it remains relatively free (at least in many countries) of government regulation. American politicians condemn foreign governments like China for restricting access to the Internet, yet many of those same politicians support increased government control of the Internet here in America.

Indeed, important media and political figures in the U.S. (such as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton) frequently bemoan the Internet’s “lack of a gatekeeper.” University of Chicago law professor and former Obama Administration “regulatory czar” Cass Sunstein has suggested that the federal government create an office to debunk “conspiracy” theories on the Internet. Former President Bill Clinton, that champion of honesty, has even suggested the creation of an entirely new cabinet department devoted to “fact checking” the Internet!

These proposals are done in the name of preventing the spread of factual errors, misinformation, and “conspiracy theories.” It is not too difficult to imagine how various government agencies might want to use the state’s vast resources to control what ordinary citizens say and do online. It is in their interest to stand on the Internet’s metaphorical street corner and tell the American people, “Move along, nothing to see here.”

For example, some Pentagon officials might want to discredit those sharing information about how the American public were misled into believing Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke might seek to prevent exposing the role of the Federal Reserve in bailing out up both American and European banks. Some supporters of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (or “Obamacare”) might want the government’s fact checkers to discredit those who expose how the pharmaceutical industry and the insurance lobby provided sought to enrich themselves by supporting the bill. Taxpayers should not be forced to subsidize a propaganda machine designed to keep them from knowing the truth about their government.