Here’s Why Everyone Protested Yesterday

PROTECT IP / SOPA Breaks The Internet from Fight for the Future on Vimeo.

First off, PROTECT IP, SOPA, and PIPA are all basically variants of the same bill. They’re all bad, and they all need to be stopped. The same way we stopped COICA last year, we need to stop these this year, and whatever awful laws the lobbyists cook up next year. It’s absolutely vital that we never tire, never give up, and never give in. Congress needs to know that we, the people, will never stop fighting these awful bills, no matter what they name them, and no matter how long they wait “for the opposition to die down.” We won’t quit when freedom is at stake. Not now, not ever.

The fundamental misunderstanding here lies in the false assumption that the U.S. government has any right to control the internet at all. They don’t. The U.S. government has been growing bigger and bigger, more and more greedy, and “claiming” more and more power for themselves. The problem is, our government exists, created by the people for the people. They are to do our bidding, not the other way around. They work for us. We do not work for them. We pay their salaries, not the other way around. They have no right to censor what we say or what we look at. They have no right to tell us where we can and cannot go on the internet. It is not their right. It is ours. It’s time we reminded them of that, every day, loudly and clearly, with one voice – and never stopped.

We need to educate our congressmen – these politicians all have an overwhelming and downright offensive ignorance of the way the world works. They seem to think it’s the corporation’s job to tell them what laws to pass, and the people’s job to obey them. They seem to think it’s somehow acceptable in 2012 to claim ignorance of those ‘newfangled internets’ and to mock anyone who does understand the web as a “nerd.”

You’d think that this was hyperbole, exaggeration to make a point – but alas – it is not. Actual senators and representatives were caught on video in the last few weeks, mocking the people of the internet, while at the same time saying that they themselves did not understand how it worked and had no desire to do so. They even went so far as to say they did not need any “advice from the nerds” on how to write bills about the very structure and functionality of the internet.

Imagine a senile old grandma or grandpa who has never been on the internet, or who barely knows how to check his or her email, and who has never even sent a text message. Now imagine that grandparent trying to write laws dictating the very flow of traffic over the internet. That’s what we’re dealing with here in our Senators and Representatives. They’re literally that ignorant in many cases, yet they think they have the right to tell the entire country what they can and cannot do online – to censor the web. It’s pretty appalling, and it needs to change – now.