F2C2012
2 HN recommenders · recommended in 5 months, 2013–2023
22:52 · 500K views · May 22, 2012
Aaron Swartz's keynote at Freedom to Connect 2012 describing how ordinary people helped defeat the SOPA censorship bill. He recounts how the Senate unexpectedly united behind the bill and how grassroots action stopped it.
HN shares it as an inspiring account of citizens changing Washington, especially after Swartz's death.
8 comments from Hacker News
So the alternative is to do nothing? Which is better? At least this gets some momentum going, hopefully being picked up by press, maybe even them questioning the president about it at some later interview. Doing nothing means nothing will get done. This is probably exactly what the government would like you to do. "The people rose up and caused a sea change in Washington" ~ Aaron Swartz This last part of his speech is so powerful. this video
I agree, though other petitions can be effective. If you care about a cause, place your signature on a petition hosted with an organization that will tirelessly advocate for that cause. Organizations in turn live and die by their ability to gather and show support for the causes they fight. If there's anything techies should've learned from the SOPA battle, it's that it is possible to make political change when enough people speak out. If you haven't watched aaronsw's talk on stopping SOPA, it's well worth your time. this video
> Facebook, Yahoo, Amazon, eBay, Mozilla, Reddit, PayPal, Twitter, and scores of smaller tech companies went into battle mode to oppose SOPA and PIPA. This author is getting some basic points wrong in this section that force me to reserve judgment on the entire article. (Unfortunate, since I think it's a great idea for journalists to do the hard work of checking up on orgs like EFF in a broad critique like this.) Aaron Swartz was the one who went into battle mode to oppose these bills, starting with COICA in September 2010. Aaron's own speech on the subject: "Now if you've been reading the press you probably didn't hear this part of the story. As Hollywood has been telling it, the 'Great Good Copyright Bill' they were pushing was stopped by the evil internet companies who make millions of dollars off of copyright infringement. But it just really wasn't true. I mean, I was in there-- in the meetings with the internet companies. (Actually probably all here today.) And if all their profits depended on copyright infringement they would have put a lot more money into changing copyright law. The fact is, the bigger internet companies-- they would do just fine if this bill passed. I mean, they wouldn't be thrilled about it, but I doubt they would even have a noticeable dip in their stock price. "So they were against it, but they were against it like the rest of us on grounds primarily of principle. And principle doesn't have a lot of money in the budget to spend on lobbyists. "So th
I have a difficult time accepting that as a narrative for what happened to prevent SOPA from becoming law, and am not sure what the implications are for the constellation of topics surrounding privacy and secretive agencies compelling cooperation. To start of with, (1) I don't think that Google et al were intimidated by users' potential wrath in the face of SOPA passing, and (2) do not think that lobbyists countering those in favor of the legislation had any notable effect. To the first part, few people said they were threatening to boycott Google or Facebook, and their threats would not have been credible. Additionally, the list of companies who eventually came out against SOPA do not spend very much on lobbying. SOPA might have been a help to incumbent market participants, because while it would have been feasible for them to implement protections, it would have been an enormous barrier to entry for any new competitors based on user-generated content. So, I agree that it is surprising that they eventually came out against SOPA, and that it may have been for the sake of public relations as much as for sincere ideological compatibility. And yet, still, many of the most powerful lobbies have influence through the large number of members who follow through when the group decides to send letters expressing outrage about some pet issue as much as from financial power, which is ultimately used for financing ads in attempt to influence people's votes. Anyway, I'd encourage people t
> But back to civil disobedience. Swartz stole the material, pure and simple, and he seems to feel that he and others have, in this case, the right to steal because they are beholden to a higher moral standard. I am sort of fine with this if he’s willing to accept the consequences, as Ellsberg and the Civil Rights activists were. This argument has been used to discredit Aaron as an activist, and at worst, to paint him as a spoiled sissy. But I'm not so sure that Aaron should be judged as a civil rights activist because I don't think he intended to promote his cause with civil disobedience. Instead, I think Aaron seemed to care more about the successful dissemination of the information, with attention to his cause being the secondary objective . Or else why would he engage in such subterfuge to download from JSTOR, when he very well could've just walked into the MIT Library, shouted "FOR FREEDOM!" as he flipped on an AlienWare laptop and the scraper script? He masked his face, hid his laptop in the closet, because he wanted to actually get the data and disseminate it ...the information itself was the greater good, it seems. Unlike MLK Jr., who wanted to get arrested to bring attention to the plight of minorities, getting arrested would prevent Aaron from actually distributing the academic information. Ironically, if Aaron had acted like a MLK Jr. of Information Rights, people would be ripping on him as a showboat. One of the interesting anecdotes that came from his memorial wa