Why I’m fighting SOPA: It’s hypocritical, onerous and dumb

The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) may have been shelved by Congress, but the Senate’s PROTECT-IP Act (PIPA) still looms and Jason Hoffman can’t stop wondering how we got to this place.

“It’s all just so dumb,” said Hoffman, CTO and founder of Joyent, a hosting provider that also offers IaaS and PaaS services. “The Senate bill is just as bad, if not worse than SOPA. These are both dumb bills and [are] a classic example of industry-specific lobbyists creating stupid laws.” Does that mean that the motion picture and recording industry has better lobbyists than SOPA opponents like Facebook, Twitter et al? Not really, it just shows that it’s easier to lobby when someone is supposedly a thief or a suspected terrorist, he said. “How do you lobby for freedom? That’s harder.” What really grates on Hoffman, is that the industries seeking protection — movie studios, record companies, publishing houses, broadcast networks — brought this mess on themselves. “Look at the list of companies supporting these bills. It could be a list of railroad companies a hundred years ago fighting the auto industry,” he said.