Posted on January 6, 2012, Phil Hornshaw Al Gore Opposes SOPA, Everybody
So Al Gore, former vice president of the U.S. and beard aficionado, is taking an anti-SOPA position. You’ve heard of SOPA, or the Stop Online Piracy Act, right? Because we’ve been discussing it pretty extensively, talking about the Congressional debates over it and why it’s overbroad. We’ve even discussed the fact that while SOPA isn’t the solution, piracy is still a real problem.
Anyway, Gore said during a speech at a CareerBuilder event that he’s against anything that would threaten “the vibrancy of the Internet.” There was a YouTube video, but it has since been removed. Tech Dirt was kind enough to write out a transcript before the video disappeared, however. Read it below.
… are now able to be shared digitally. There is a growing concern on the part of the companies and individuals who create that content, that they’re not getting compensated in a fair way, and so they want to impose a new set of requirements on those companies who provide access to the Internet, like the browsers, the search engines, etc. And some of these new requirements, according to the experts on the Internet, would very probably have the effect of really shutting down the vibrancy of the Internet. As in all things, some compromise must be possible. The content creators and owners have a point and a legitimate complaint… But, in our country, in our world today, there is hardly anything more important — whether you want to solve global warming, as I do, whether you want to reinvigorate democracy as many of us do, whatever problem you want to fix — there is hardly anything more important to getting the right things done than to save and protect the vibrancy and freedom of the Internet. The Internet is bringing life back to democracy. We saw it in Egypt. We’re seeing it in Russia now. We’ve seen it in so many places…. If you look at the reform movements around the world, and in the US, more than likely they’re based on internet forms of organization. And anything that would threaten the vibrancy and freedom of the Internet, I’m against!
Via Tech Dirt.