San Francisco Chronicle - Silicon Valley’s Congresswoman Anna Eshoo: LOVES the online SOPA protest

Rep. Eshoo recently spoke with Joe Garofoli, political reporter for the San Francisco Chronicle, about the web protest agains the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA).  The article is below:

Just got done chatting with one of Silicon Valley's congressional voices — Rep. Anna Eshoo, D-Palo Alto — and she was thrilled to see the online protest Wednesday against the Protect IP Act, or PIPA, and in the House as the Stop Online Piracy Act, or SOPA that Comrade Lochhead told us about the other day. For a time Wednesday's, Eshoo's Congressional website featured a black screen which nodded to the protests before opening up to her House web site.

Eshoo was pumped to see Silicon Valley companies — including Google — engage their users on the issue. (For examples of these online protests, check out our blog brethen at the Tech Chronicles blog.) Eshoo said Congressional offices have been "flooded" with e-mail and calls.

"These people finally got smart," Eshoo said. "I've been preaching to these companies for months: You know what? I know how to do things inside. But you have to do something from the outside.

"You've got to unleash people so that they know and that they participate in it. That's when Congress stands up and listens. They may not do exactly what you want them to do, but you'll get their attention becasue they're hearing from people they represent," Eshoo said.

Indeed. As James Temple points out, it worked. Several Republican lawmakers, uh, cough, cough, "reconsidered," their positions Wednesday in light of the protests.

To read the article online, please click here.