Tomorrow Wikipedia will shut down for 24 hours to protest the online piracy laws being considered in Congress, House Bill HR. 3261 and Senate Bill S. 968. I applaud Jimmy Wales and the Wikipedia community for taking a stand.

As a musician and software engineer, I have been following this debate since the days of the DAT (digital audio tape) even before the CD was born. Lawyers whined about potential lost sales and successfully stopped consumer DAT products. That whining continues to this day in articles I receive each morning in my inbox.

they are looking for broad power to shut down web sites based on accusations, not convictions

Given that I make a living from intellectual property, I should be sympathetic to the anti-piracy advocates, but I'm not. The recording companies are the sames ones who signed artists to crappy deals for so many years.

These are the same companies that sat on their hands and until Steve Jobs finally cajoled them into offering their music online. By then, they were so far behind that any semblance of control over the digital transition was out of reach.

Now instead of innovating and leveraging the wondrous possibilities of digital entertainment, they are looking for broad power to shut down web sites based solely on accusations, not convictions.

Not only would this violate due process rights and freedom of speech, it just plain won't work. You can't start messing around with the underpinnings of the internet by futzing with DNS servers and expect anything good to come of it.

My advice to the entertainment biz is to stop looking for a legislative silver bullet. You need to go after those offenders you can, but much more importantly you need to embrace the opportunity rather than wish for the past.

January 28, 2012 San Francisco