Opposing The Protect IP Act

Roughly a month ago, I wrote a post outlining why the Protect IP act is bad legislation. We got a significant amount of outreach from that post from colleagues in the venture capital business who are equally concerned about the chilling effect such legislation would have on innovation in the tech sector.

So yesterday our firm along with 53 other VCs sent a letter to congress opposing the Protect IP act. My partner Brad wrote a blog post on the Union Square Ventures blog outlining why we are collectively opposed to the Protect IP legislation. In that post, Brad noted that:

Venture capitalists are notoriously apolitical. We believe in markets. We are not asking for tax breaks or favorable regulatory rulings, we are asking for restraint.

The group of venture capitalists who joined us in expressing concern about S. 968, the PROTECT IP Act ("PIPA") represent a broad range of political views. We share a passion for start-ups and a conviction that young companies are a fantastic source of productive innovation. This group is responsible for a significant amount of investment in the U.S. economy.

The signatories to this letter work for firms that manage over $13B. We are early investors in services like Facebook, Twitter, Zynga, Skype, Groupon, LinkedIn, Tumblr, Foursquare, and a host of other important web services. The services we have backed now reach over a billion users.

We believe that policy makers understand the importance of this sector of our economy. We hope they will address our concerns.

If you'd like to join us in expressing your concerns to congress about Protect IP, you can do so here.

You can also voice your concerns at Votizen.

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