CPAC And The Defense of Internet Freedom

WASHINGTON - At the annual CPAC (Conservative Political Action Conference) it is sometimes hard to get away from someone preaching to the choir. It is so often a conservative talking to conservatives about things that conservatives love or hate. However, there are certain things that not all conservatives agree on. Internet freedom and internet piracy is certainly one of them.

CPAC put together a panel to discuss Internet freedom and piracy, with the five members of the panel having drastically different views on the subject. Each was given five minutes in the beginning to introduce their views on the subject.

The first was Tripp Baird, a lobbyist for the Heritage Foundation. Tripp, by his own admission, was not an expert on the iInternet and not a copyright lawyer. However, he described why he was lobbying for the Heritage Foundation, and how it was an attempt to combat the left who has been lobbying the government for a long time. He then went on to describe his view, and the view of the Heritage Foundation, that all government should keep its hands off the Internet. In his opinion, once the government touches something, it destroys it. He also warned of an upcoming bill that will allow states to tax the Internet, and said we should all be fighting against this.

Next was Phil Kerpen, President of the group American Commitment. He discussed John Locke and his views that intellectual property should be protected. He also referenced the Federalist papers where Madison talked about copyrights being enforced for authors, thus (apparently) proving that the Founding Fathers were supporters of intellectual property. He also thought police powers would be a good option for enforcing copyright infringement, and cited the case against Kim Dotcom as a good example of that.

After Mr. Kerpen finished his arguments Derek Khanna, the chairman and founder of Solutions For America, made his case. Khanna was asked at the absolute last minute to be on the panel, and fill the void left by a Google employee who had to cancel. However, having been published in a law journal on the topic, Khanna was more than prepared to make his case. He went after Kerpen’s argument that the Founding Fathers were for protection of intellectual property and that the right to copyright protection was a natural right. He cited many examples from the Founding Fathers that put time limits on copyrights and intellectual property. If they thought this expired after 70 year or 28 years then how could intellectual property be a natural right? He also talked about how the DMCA completely crippled innovation; how new technology that has nothing to do with piracy was kept off the market simply because it was new. Things like aides for the blind and deaf, that if they are used could send these people to jail just for trying to help themselves over a handicap. His main point was there are different ways to deal with copyright and intellectual property than the DMCA.

Markham Erickson, General Counsel for the Internet Association used his five minutes to say that any conservative should hate liars and thieves and that anyone who thinks internet piracy isn’t bad should be considered both. He then cited example after example of instances that he thought Google had stolen ideas from other companies to advance themselves for the remainder of the five minutes.

Finally, Donna Wiesner Keene spoke about how she was a patent attorney. She said that our government wants to regulate the Internet, however, the Internet is a global entity. What power do American laws have in China? We should be wary of the government creating laws about the Internet because as we should know laws don’t die. They keep growing. We should not crush innovation on the Internet by regulating or taxing it.

With the five members of the panel establishing their arguments and where they stood on the issue of Internet freedom and piracy, the moderator next went to the crowd for questions. One notable question was asked by a member of the audience who said he worked with Intellectual Property. He asked a very leading question directed at Derek Khanna and it seemed to entrap him. The question was, ‘do you believe intellectual property should be treated the same as any other property?’ After some discussion back and forth as to the wording of the question, Derek made the point that the American government and judicial system do not even treat intellectual property the same as other property. He used the example that if he stole someone’s car he could be sued for the value of the car, however if he illegally downloads a song he can be sued for hundreds of thousands of dollars and face ten years in jail.

Another great question was directed at the two members of the panel who took a harder stance on Internet piracy. It was asked by a member of the media who had worked in the Intelligence community before “becoming a real person again.” He went on to say that the U.S. government and the intelligence community is collecting data on every one of its citizens and has the ability to spy on any citizen it wants. He asked if there was a solution to Internet piracy that wasn’t a big government, big brother solution that involved the government trolling the Internet and spying on its citizens to do so. Markham Erickson responded that he thought piracy is a crime so treat it like any other crime and make investigators get warrants before they do anything. Phil Kerpen said he thought going after people that run sites or cutting off their financial streams by going through Paypal or other companies was a good option.

What should the conservative stance on piracy and Internet freedom be? I know my own views on piracy and internet freedom, and I was glad that a member of the panel had echoed what my views on the subject have always been. That member was Tripp Baird, the lobbyist for the Heritage Foundation. And I think the view that we both share on the issue is the correct conservative view. Tripp said nothing outside of the first five minutes he was given to talk, but I think he said all he needed to say in that short time. The argument was simple, and the argument was conservative to the core. It was based on the most inherent principle of conservatism, that the government shouldn’t get involved in matters it wasn’t intended to, because it ruins and destroys them.

This shouldn’t be surprising considering Tripp represents a group that has been at the forefront of the conservative movement for years. If you can trust any group to always be right on conservative issues it is the Heritage Foundation. I got a chance to talk to Tripp outside of the room where the panel was being held where he removed any doubt from my mind that the Heritage Foundation and Tripp himself were absolutely correct in their stance on Internet freedom. He was saying there is no legislation that could regulate the Internet, and he said if there was he’d like to see it. In his view, and in mine, there is no legislation that would be able to handle regulating the Internet, which is so rapidly changing every day. And there is no legislation that wouldn’t give one industry or company the upper hand on another.

This is what conservative, and all Americans need to realize. The government cannot regulate the Internet, it is impossible. You can’t stop things like Internet piracy, and we as Americans don’t want you to. Not because we enjoy piracy, but because the implications that comes with trying to stop it. Bills like SOPA, CISPA, and ACTA all mean less freedom for Americans and too much regulation of the Internet, a medium that has been used time and time again to protect freedom, expose fraud, gain independence, and something that should be protected at all costs. The conservative stance on the Internet should be stay the hell out government. You will not ruin this for us.