An email I received from Jimmy Wales regarding SOPA

The thing is that it's not about DMCA, Protect IP, or SOPA, or $whatever per se. It's the big stinking pile of cash that is the force which continuously tries to leak through a dam and overflow down to congress. Patching individual holes does work but paradoxically, the better we do it the bigger is the force that accumulates behind our dam. If the dam holds, the force might just rise above the river banks and bypass the opposition totally.

Don't think of this as a gloomy doomsday post. I believe that in the end the freedom of people will win. However, it won't happen until that monetary force is first made to behave itself, though. Continuing the analogy, the force should be redirected to another, more constructive riverbed instead of letting it suppress the freedoms of people.

What interests me is the dynamics of these forces globally. If we happen to invent something as liberating and nurturing as the internet, why does this destructive force sooner or later appear and try to shut it down?

Or is it just that we people not completely ready for these new freedoms offered by the Net and that very extent to which we aren't then shows up in the form of commercial and governmental resistance against it?

It's pretty good to tackle SOPA, but the bigger picture is that there had been and currently are other SOPA-related bills. So it's seems likely that there will be more future attempts until it gives way to more Internet control.

Demand Internet Freedom bills to replace SOPA.

Wales has in the past asked on Twitter for any tipps on geo ip matching visitors with local representatives/districts. Something like this would be "THE" golden tool for any grassroots campaign. I truly hope they/EFF are working on something like that.

The original article has been removed from Reddit, and only the comment thread remains. Apparently there is some doubt as to whether Jimmy Wales of Wikipedia actually wrote the e-mail in question. Here is the full text of the article, taken from http://smagula.org/?q=aggregator/sources/7 :

30 December 2011 - 9:27pm

First my email to Jimmy

Hi Jimmy,

I'm going to keep this short and sweet. Reddit is capable of doing giant things, GoDaddy for example. But it seems as if the internet is only boycotting GoDaddy because they (godaddy) actually rely on the internet that they are ruining for profits. There are a great number of posts on reddit calling for action and a larger boycott of all the companies backing SOPA, but they are getting lost in the static. So I ask you to write one more personal appeal calling for action. As a internet celebrity of sorts, and a figurehead for free speech I feel as if your words would be taken less lightly and people across the globe might get on the same page so to speak.

Thanks for everything you do, a concerned internet addict.

And his reply:

I think it's worth taking a step back and thinking about what we can accomplish and how we can win this thing. The boycott and back down of Go Daddy was important - it got the Internet community organized to start doing something. But the support of one company doesn't make or break SOPA - indeed, the support of whatever companies doesn't make or break SOPA - what does is awakening the general public and activating them to call, write, or visit their Congressperson.

Many of the companies on the list of supporters do, in fact, have legitimate beefs with the current situation. Particularly for companies like Chanel, Coach, Juicy Couture, etc. - they face a daily problem with counterfeit merchandise sold via foreign websites. Boycotting them would be counter-productive because they are rightly considered by the public to be victims here.

My issue is not with working to crack down on counterfeit goods, trademark infringement, copyright infringement, etc. My issue is that the bill attempts to do so in a way that is inconsistent with the First Amendment and that the bill is technologically incompetent.

A boycott against companies who are not tech companies (and who therefore, unlike Go Daddy, can't be expected to understand the technical issues) in this context runs the risk of the entire anti-SOPA movement being branded unfairly as not caring about the real problems.

So Go Daddy backed down - and Congress watched that play out. The next thing is not to hammer on other companies, but to hammer on Congress directly. I've been told that if I can get 30,000-40,000 people to call or write their Congressional representative, it will have an impact. My view is that 30,000-40,000 is easy. We should be aiming much higher.

But to do that we have to get people off their butts to do the right thing. A lot of people! I think we can!

--Jimbo

Wise words.

I can submit a screenshot for proof if need be.

I'm wondering if running the phones off isn't a little too routine to get attention.

How would one go about aggregating mail so as to pull a "Miracle on 34th Street" stunt? Several hundred thousand letters ought to do it.