A campaign opposing the legislation launched about three minutes ago — Sunlight is among the signatories. It’s going to be interesting to see how this works out:
- Will CISPA come to fully carry the “new SOPA” framing that advocates (intoxicated by the overwhelming success of that earlier campaign) are going to be unable to resist suggesting?
- Will that be productive, or will the net bloc feel that it’s being manipulated and disengage?
- Can organization of this constituency succeed without the support of the net’s commercial entities? By most accounts they’re indifferent to CISPA in a way they weren’t with SOPA.
All I can tell you is that people who who have spent years promising that the internet will transform our democracy* are very excited about how the SOPA/PIPA fight went down — and with good reason! It was a thunderous victory by all accounts. The people who have been quietly toiling in this arena feel that they might have discovered a new weapon, and the temptation to try to use it soon will no doubt prove irresistible.
Normally, trying to clone a successful campaign action is a recipe for disappointment. But it really is true that reflexive opposition to everything Congress tries to do to the internet is a pretty sound policy rule of thumb; there’s an online constituency with vague political preferences but a strong sense of net territoriality and disillusionment with Washington; and the business communities who are most interested in mucking with the internet aren’t really set up to run successful campaigns against an engaged public opposition (these guys are used to getting their way because there’s basically no one paying attention on the other side).
So we’ll see!
* in more inspiring ways than opening up a bunch of small donor money or boring, non-cutting edge (or just uninterestingly egalitarian) things like enabling constituent communication, I mean