By Lauren Keyson
Eric Hippeau, former CEO of Huffington Post and now a partner at the VC firm Lerer Ventures was present at the rally for Stop SOPA that convened today in Midtown Manhattan outside the offices of Senators Charles E. Schumer and Kirsten E. Gillibrand, co-sponsors for some of the piracy legislation. Over 1,000 people RSVP’ed to the NYTM, the organizer of the protest.
“This is the geekiest, most rational protest in the history of New York City,” said Reddit Co-founder Alexis Ohanian in front of the hundreds of coders, geeks, and entrepreneurs who stood outside in the cold.
Hippeau has always been enthusiastic about internet content. During his tenure as CEO at Ziff-Davis, he was early to recognize the trend towards online media, helping push the company’s traditional magazine business towards a business model that leveraged the web.
On the sidewalk outside the senator’s offices, Hippeau spoke with DisruptiveTechnologists.com:
“Naturally, I am against SOPA. Media companies should be against it as well. There are other ways for them to protect their content. SOPA, potentially, is really harmful to companies. Anything that potentially is a danger to the freedom of the internet – everyone should be against it. The internet has been the main driving force of growth in our economy; we Americans are leaders, as far as web and digital technologies are concerned. Anything that would limit our ability to continue to innovate should be protested.”
