Members of Congress, particularly Republicans, like to talk about how over-regulation strangles growth businesses in this country, which makes it particularly ironic that the SOPA/PIPA bills got this far.
If you want to let entrepreneurship flourish, get government out of the way. Don’t legislate protections for old industries that would prefer to manipulate government rather than adjust their business models to tackle new opportunities. Get rid of software patents, which are a huge legislative vampire on innovation in this country. Let everyone compete in the market, and out of the courts.
The Samwer brothers just generated outrage with “Pinspire”, their unabashedly blatant clone of Pinterest. It sucks that they spend their talents and resources on clones rather than innovation and changing the world for the better, but so be it.
I would rather live in a world where the Samwer brothers have the freedom to make a Pinspire than one bogged down by IP regulations. The digital domain is too interconnected and cross-pollinating for protections to work without massive, horrible unintended consequences. Successful startups just need to expand internationally sooner rather than later.
Our industry is facing a very asymmetric battle — grass roots versus big corporate money and lobbyists. Given the way Congress appears to be functioning right now, I think grass roots protest movements will only get us so far.
We need to fight fire with fire, and big money with grass-roots money. I would like to see a grass-roots-funded organization that is dedicated to a startup-friendly agenda; an organization that will stay on top of Congress and make sure something like SOPA/PIPA never gets so far along again; an organization that is publicly dedicated to getting rid of software patents in the USA, and who can focus public attention on big tech companies who don’t join that movement.
Does this organization currently exist? EFF doesn’t feel like what I’m looking for. If it does exist, please let me know. If not, I hope that changes soon. I read about VCs making periodic trips to DC, but I’d love to see them band together to seed an innovation lobbying organization that the rest of us could then back.