The Internet Defense League (IDL) officially launched Thursday. IDL will actively work against future laws that seek to regulate copyrighted content such as the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and Protect IP Act (PIPA).
Members of the organization include Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA), WordPress, Mozilla, Electronic Frontier Foundation, Reddit and OpenCongress/PPF.
“What Americans understand that the government doesn’t understand is that Americans can do things well without government regulations,” explains Issa.
“I gained prominence during SOPA because my entire way of life was being threatened,” adds Alexis Ohanian, Reddit co-founder. “We’ve been busy spending our attention innovating instead of lobbying on Capitol Hill.”
Interestingly, The Motion Picture Association of America, which supported SOPA and PIPA, released the following statement:
“We couldn’t agree more with the Internet Defense League that an Internet that works for everyone is critical to both our economy and our national identity — and in order for the Internet to work for everyone, we need to set balanced policies that help protect hard work while still encouraging the freedom to create. The creative community, like the tech community, is built entirely on ideas and innovation. The free flow of information on the Internet is critical, but it can’t be promoted at the expense of creators and their rights.”
Symbolic of the alert code it will send out to members to mobilize their activities, IDL projected a “cat signal” into the sky on Thursday night in four cities — New York City, San Francisco, Washington D.C. and Ulaarbataar, Mongolia.
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