Jared Polis Criticizes 'Stop Online Piracy Act,' Notes SOPA Enforcement Is Prohibitively Expensive Since 'The Internet Is For Porn'

Congressman Jared Polis (D-CO) knows a thing or two about the internet. After graduating from Princeton, Polis proceeded to make millions dabbling in e-commerce, founding sites such as American Information Systems, bluemountain.com, and Proflowers.com. In sharp contrast to many of his colleagues (one of whom famously explained the internet "is not a big truck -- it's a series of tubes"), Polis not only understands how the internet works, but also why it functions as it does.

As lawmakers debate the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), an act Polis has criticized for "the harm it could do to legitimate online commerce and innovation, free speech, cybersecurity, and the technical infrastructure of the internet," the representative deserves kudos for highlighting some of the legislation's more outlandish aspects. Especially, Polis believes, attempting to apply SOPA to the pornography industry.

In a December 15th speech (watch above), Polis highlighted this issue by entering into the Congressional Record a song from Broadway's Avenue Q titled "The Internet Is For Porn." Polis stopped short of reading aloud the lyrics, clarifying "my amendment would simply ensure that American tax dollars are not used to protect the intellectual property rights of pornographic or obscene websites," but the lyrics are safely in the record.

WATCH Avenue Q's Broadway performance of 'The Internet Is For Porn' (WARNING: sexually suggestive language):

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Comments

[cenourinha]

03:26 PM on 12/28/2011

The more I hear about Jared Polis, the more I like him. Wish I lived in his district.

[snowowl7]

01:16 PM on 12/28/2011

SOPA is a sly attempt by the government to pass a law that will allow the automatic shut down of any website that they find in violation of this law. Read the actual law and you will find it is more about internet control than pirated content costing companies money. We as people of a free society should be more concerned with the type of control this will give a federal agency and the type of impact it will have on our future generations ability to have full access to any content they wish to find on the internet.

[Vintage59]

05:30 PM on 12/26/2011

It is so sad to read these comments. Most of the people have no idea of what Polis position is or what he said.

SOPA would do far more harm than online piracy has and I am no fan of online piracy. I don't have anything against online porn but I've never found it to be very fulfilling. I do hate that when I click on the Post Comment button there won't be 69 comments any more.

[Fangs78]

08:00 AM on 12/21/2011

LOL!!!

To all those that think porn is not liable for this law:
-
ALL PORN IS COPYRIGHTED ALREADY!!! So the porn industry could, and WOULD, use SOPA to stop sites from distributing their material illegally. GET IT?! Spending millions of tax-payer dollars to stop pirating of porn material. Lol!
-

Jesus! Where does the internet find these idiots?!

[colin72]

01:35 AM on 12/21/2011

"Rep. Polis On SOPA: 'The Internet Is For Porn'"

Exactly what I was just thinking. Gotta go.

[helioszephyr]

06:21 PM on 12/20/2011

Intellectual property and porn are a bit of an oxymoron.

Hardly gives rise (no pun intended!) to copyright infringement.

[helioszephyr]

06:09 PM on 12/20/2011

copyright porn?
how many "new and original" ways are there to "shag"?

the film's scripts/"stories" and concepts are all the same!

[Barkingdog48]

08:24 AM on 12/21/2011

See my favorite protected porn, "The Kama Sutra" which demos too many to mention here, Dear.

[helioszephyr]

09:40 AM on 12/21/2011

... 3 of which constitute 99.999% all of mainstream porn film content.

[Barkingdog48]

07:12 PM on 12/21/2011

The KS is a form of "Porn posing as education". We see it happen all the time. However, there are too many other issues in the world to spend time with porn. I do not watch it. This was a
"tongue in cheek" comment.

[fusillijerry]

08:59 PM on 12/26/2011

You've seen all of them?

[helioszephyr]

10:05 PM on 12/27/2011

Unlike many intellectual human endeavors, this is a bit like football... you don't have to see every game to know the objective is to get the ball across the goal line, or with a bit of imagination and creativity, envision the various ways to cross that goal line.

[denideamachine]

04:42 PM on 12/20/2011

Guys did anyone actually listen to him speaking?

He is putting this forward to put reps in favor of SOPA (mostly conservatives) in the sticky position of empowering the porn industry, an industry which many of the Conservatives have chastised in the name of family values.

In addition it shows how widespread and overlybroad SOPA is. Yes copyright is copyright but, as Polis said, Porn traffic is 10 - 15 percent of internet traffic. Now any time the Porn Industry feels a website has infringed on them they can have it investigated and blacklisted. Sure this is good for the Porn industry but the amount of man power it takes up would be MASSIVE.

So on one hand Police is making the Conservatives vote against their "moral" priorities and at the same time proving that SOPA is terribly over broad and would essentially take up all the time of the Justice Deparment.

It's really a Brilliant political tactic and apparently it flew over everyone's heads. BTW just as a side note Mr. Polis is gay. I know gay people watch porn as well but I just figured with all the "we know what he's doing!" posts you should at least have the right picture in your head.

Polis is awesome (and most likely knew that the family first phonies would vote big business over morality)

[koalaholik]

09:19 PM on 12/21/2011

Polis is my rep and I agree with you the man is brilliant. By the way, he and his long-term partner just had a baby boy. I don't think he has time to watch any porn right now.

[crayola 08b]

12:51 PM on 12/20/2011

if that's his opinion then whenever he's surfing the web it's obvious what he's doing...

[tlcpro]

12:36 PM on 12/20/2011

The Internet is used for way more than porn. Hell, Hustler still publishes don't they? More people use the Internet for information, email and shopping than for surfing porn. Get a grip. If you're going to copyright porn, you may as well start issuing copyrights to prostitutes.

[nothingchanges]

11:08 AM on 12/20/2011

Personal Opinion.

America needs to grow up.

What happens on the internet isn't nearly as obscene as what happens in Congress.

[Lolman1234134]

07:01 AM on 12/20/2011

If he cuts off the porn industry, hes going to make a lot of people very very upset.

[jabailo]

05:34 AM on 12/20/2011

Well we all know it's not for bluemountain or proflowers...

Who ever used such sites?

[DMSmith]

12:24 AM on 12/20/2011

He just told us more about himself than he did about the internet.
Sometimes I wonder how really stupid people get elected to office.

[trickjames23]

11:57 AM on 12/20/2011

Polis is awesome and he's right. You want your tax dollars going to regulate the intellectual property of the pron industry?

[tlcpro]

12:31 PM on 12/20/2011

Nope. Porn is prostitution, IMHO. It is for morally bankrupt people like him.

[robmclaughjr]

11:59 PM on 12/19/2011

Speak for yourself. I've been there but people do grow-up. I use the Internet extensively and I rarely use porn anymore. Congresspeople love to indulge in stereotypes. Maybe they feel it helps them connect to their voters. Otherwise, they're making it up or lying. The Internet is used more for checking the weather than porn. More for checking the sports scores than porn. Much more for Netflix than porn (no porn on Netflix). I'm not against defending porn from fundamentalists. But don't lie.