Hacking Politics: How we beat SOPA and saved the Internet

The effort culminated in a week of unprecedented activism, but it took months -- even years -- to lay the framework that made that possible. 

The book Hacking Politics is the story of many of the activists, politicians, academics, artists, and others who helped attune the Internet public to the threat of SOPA -- and beat it back.

It will be edited by Demand Progress and Don't Censor the Net -- two of the many groups that helped kill SOPA and save the Internet (for now).

Pledged contributors include the following individuals and representatives of the folowing organizations*:

Center for Democracy and Technology * Cheezburger Network * Cory Doctorow * Demand Progress * Don't Censor the Net * Electronic Fontier Foundation * Erin Mckeown * Fight for the Future * FireDogLake * Flobots *  Free Press * Future of Music Coalition * Google * Lawrence Lessig * Congressmember Zoe Lofgren * Occupy * Congressmember Ron Paul * Public Knowledge * Reddit * Suicide Girls * Tea Party * Tech Freedom * Senator Ron Wyden, and many more.

*The overwhelming majority of content is new, but the book will include interesting artifacts from anti-SOPA effort, and some content that's adapted from speeches and existing writing.

What We Need & What You Get

This project is under way, but design, editing, and publicity costs are piling up way beyond our capacity to keep pace.  Your support will help guarantee that it comes out on schedule (before the end of the year), tells this complicated story as thoroughly as possible, and has the farthest reach and broadest impact.

 

We're trying to raise $20,000, but staff time that's gone into writing and editing has already exceeded that value -- and we've recently had to hire on some contractors to help with supplementary editing.  All of these funds come directly out of the same small pool of money we'd use to run activism campaigns.

Then, once we release Hacking Politics we'll want to hire a publicist to help make sure the book has the broadest possible reach and impact -- your donations will help make that possible.

Any extra proceeds will help fund our organizations' scrappy, ever under-capitalized efforts to keep the web free and open.

The Impact

It's shocking, but there hasn't even been a serious long-form article about the anti-SOPA effort -- even though it dominated online discourse for months, took over global political discourse for much of December and January of 2011-2012, and was an exceedingly rare instance of public outcry actually compelling our lawmakers to do the right thing.

 

It's critical that we document what happened and try to derive lessons from it that can be applied to future activist efforts: There are countless cool stories to tell about what happened -- online, in the streets, and in the halls of power -- and all sorts of new tools and tactics that were developed in the process of killing SOPA that ought more widely studied and understood.

 

Other Ways You Can Help

Share our effort with your friends and download the ebook when it comes out!