i3 - July/August 2016 - 9

By Cindy Loffler Stevens

Senator Wyden at CES

You led the fight to defeat the PIPA bill,
which along with SOPA would have
had a damaging impact on the internet.
How did this fight impact the relationship between government and tech?
It was a real wake-up call for Congress. I
had put a hold on PIPA and I put a hold
on the predecessor to PIPA, which would
have passed in the fall of 2011 if I had not
come out against it. I did it because first of
all it would have done enormous damage to innovation and that would have
changed the architecture of the internet
in a very real and significant way. It also
was important in terms of sending a
very different message in Congress with
respect to technology. At the time there
were more than 30 senators as sponsors
of these badly flawed bills. And that is an
army in the United States Senate. I kept
trying to tell my colleagues that there are a
lot of people in the tech sector who spend
more time online and they are not going to
C TA . t e c h / i 3

be happy with this bill. We kept working
with folks like CTA to build this unprecedented coalition because there was going
to be a vote overriding the hold that I had.
Before the vote there was something like
10 million emails, tweets and calls and all
of a sudden we turned it around. To me it
sent the message that when there really is a
mobilization of people in technology who
care about the internet and small businesses, and of course with the leadership of
CTA being instrumental, we can win.
What a victory. What did both sides
learn?
It is important stepping back for people to
see what the implications were. SOPA and
PIPA were hugely flawed policies which
would have done enormous damage to the
open internet by taking this heavy handed
approach to copyright infringement by
aiming to shut down entire websites. The
collateral damage was internet censor-

ship that would have weakened internet
security. I was the lone senator at the outset holding the legislation up. I was very
pleased that Senator Moran from Kansas
joined me to make it a bi-partisan effort.
When you have millions of Americans
getting in touch with their member of
Congress and major websites like Reddit
and Wikipedia going dark, we saw that
innovators who are more disruptive can
win against the odds. The incumbents that
are entrenched always try to push policies
that shut down competitors to try to hold
back innovation. They have done it with
a variety of measures to undermine the
freedom of the open internet and we are
going to keep pushing back the other way.
This shows that we can win.
With the recent tragedy in Orlando,
we expect the debate over encryption
and privacy to regain prominence.
How can tech companies protect their
users' privacy while also helping law
enforcement keep us safe?
Let's set the backdrop for the post-Orlando
period. Our country has suffered a grievous injury again with this horrific tragedy.
I went to the floor of the Senate and I
talked about these mass shootings that
are taking place like clockwork. We have
been scarred by a number of tragedies in
my home state - Thurston and Clackamas
County, and of course Roseburg, one
of the largest mass school shootings in
history. What happens invariably is that
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