Tune in here 12-1:45pm today for the livestream (below) of TechFreedom‘s joint Capitol Hill briefing, “Unintended Consequences of Rogue Website Crackdown,” co-sponsored by the Competitive Enterprise Institute and the Cato Institute. Our expert panel will discuss the recent outpouring of public opposition to the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Protect IP Act (PIPA), what’s next for these troublesome bills, possible compromises, and the proposed alternative, Online Protection and Enforcement of Digital Trade (OPEN) Act. Our panelists are:
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Ryan Radia, Associate Director of Technology Studies, CEI
- Larry Downes, Senior Adjunct Fellow, TechFreedom
- Julian Sanchez, Research Fellow, Cato
- James Gattuso, Senior Research Fellow in Regulatory Policy, Heritage Foundation
- Allan Friedman, Research Director, Center for Technology Innovation, Brookings Institution
- Dan Kaminsky, Security Researcher
Follow the discussion on the #SOPAnel hashtag or submit a question for the panel to @Tech_Freedom!
This event is the perfect way to celebrate TechFreedom‘s one-year anniversary. Our theme for the last year has been two-fold: optimism about how technology can expand our capacity to choose for ourselves and skepticism about government meddling with the Internet. As Hayek famously said about the “curious task” of economics, TechFreedom’s task is to “demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design.”
We’re skeptical of SOPA and PIPA not because we’re against copyright, but for the same reason we’re skeptical of regulations aimed at protecting net neutrality, privacy, competition, and other legitimate values: Tinkering with the Internet is a perilous game—and policymakers rarely see the full implications of their interventions.
That’s why we’ve emphasized the need to consider the trade-offs of regulating extremely carefully—to minimize unintended burdens of any rogue website crackdown on cybersecurity, free speech, entrepreneurship, and global Internet governance. But we also want an open and judicious process for copyright’s sake! As we noted in our coalition letter with CEI and other free market groups, “If the public perceives this copyright legislation to be the product of a hasty and opaque process, respect for copyrights and trademarks will be diminished, not enhanced.”
Watch the Event in QuickTime (M4V)
Download a Podcast of the Event (MP3)
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.