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Next Meetup: February 8, 2012

20 January 2012 ~ 1 Comment

We Did It! PIPA is Pulled

Announcements

Dear NY Tech Meetup Community:

WE DID IT!

The Senate has postponed its vote on “cloture” effectively ending the possibility PIPA will ever be voted on in its current form.

http://democrats.senate.gov/2012/01/20/reid-statement-on-intellectual-property-bill/

This morning Senate Majority Leader Nevada Senator Harry Reid released the following statement on the Senate’s PROTECT I.P. Act:

“In light of recent events, I have decided to postpone Tuesday’s vote on the PROTECT I.P. Act.

“There is no reason that the legitimate issues raised by many about this bill cannot be resolved. Counterfeiting and piracy cost the American economy billions of dollars and thousands of jobs each year, with the movie industry alone supporting over 2.2 million jobs. We must take action to stop these illegal practices. We live in a country where people rightfully expect to be fairly compensated for a day’s work, whether that person is a miner in the high desert of Nevada, an independent band in New York City, or a union worker on the back lots of a California movie studio.

“I admire the work that Chairman Leahy has put into this bill. I encourage him to continue engaging with all stakeholders to forge a balance between protecting Americans’ intellectual property, and maintaining openness and innovation on the Internet. We made good progress through the discussions we’ve held in recent days, and I am optimistic that we can reach a compromise in the coming weeks.”

This happened because of you!

As important as all of the online protests were around the country and the world, our Emergency NY Tech Meetup provided the physical, people-filled backdrop that filled the papers and newswires with photos of us fighting for our industry, our city, our Internet, and our democracy.

Our next step will be to make sure that whatever gets proposed by the other side as they try to salvage something from the ashes of their SOPA/PIPA push, that we, THE NEW YORK TECH COMMUNITY, is included in the process and has a major role.

We won’t let Congress, the copyright organizations, or the press, look only to Silicon Valley as representative of the tech industry or the Internet community.

What is at stake is making sure that we permanently protect the web from future attempts to attack and redesign its basic structure and insure that the NY tech community continues to grow and flourish.

In the meantime, congratulate yourselves for a job well done.

Sincerely:

Andrew Rasiej, Chairman — @rasiej
Scott Heiferman, Founder — @heif
Dawn Barber, Co-Founder – @dawntweet
Nate Westheimer, Executive Director — @innonate
Jessica Lawrence, Managing Director — @jessicalawrence
And the entire NY Tech Meetup Board — @nytm

 

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13 January 2012 ~ 0 Comments

Emergency Tech Meetup Called

Announcements Community

Join us for an Emergency NY Tech Meetup!
When: Wednesday January 18, 2012
Time 12:30-2:00PM
Where: 780 Third Ave (at 49th street) – outside the offices of New York Senators Charles Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand
RSVP: http://nytm.org/sos/

Dear NY Tech Meetup Member:

The future of the NY tech community is in jeopardy. We are writing to call you to an Emergency NY Tech Meetup in New York on January 18 so that we can publicly demonstrate our collective dismay at the unprecedented attack currently being made on the Internet and our industry. We will gather at 12:30 pm outside the offices of Senators Charles Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand at 780 Third Avenue (at 49th Street). Let us know that you’ll join us by going to http://nytm.org/sos.

Here’s why:

The Internet and information technologies have created a renaissance in startup innovation in New York that now rivals Silicon Valley as a hub for economic growth. Tens of thousands of New Yorkers have been inspired to become entrepreneurs creating thousands and thousands of new jobs and offering professionals in many of New York’s traditional industries the opportunity to start new careers participating in the 21st century global economy.

However, Congress is in the process of rushing through legislation which will not only severely damage the Internet as a marketplace and platform for entrepreneurship and open innovation, but will also seriously impact the ability of our New York tech community to continue to generate jobs, grow and flourish. Within the next two weeks, the US Senate is planning to bring the Protect Intellectual Property Act (PIPA) S.968 to the floor for a series of votes to ensure its passage.

This legislation would give the government and corporations the ability to censor the net in the name of protecting creativity simply by convincing a judge that a site is “dedicated” to copyright infringement. PIPA would give the government and corporations the ability to shut down any site connected to an accused copyright infringer. Its companion legislation in the House, the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), H.R. 3261, contains many similar problems, as well as threatening ordinary users with jail for streaming any copyrighted work – even just video of themselves singing a pop song.

More importantly, the legislation amounts to a wholesale re-engineering of the open web in a way that would allow the US government to prosecute Internet users without due process, which in turn would discourage innovation, limit investment, and hurt the our economic future. You can read and hear more about this dangerous and hurtful legislation here: http://www.fightforthefuture.org/pipa or http://americancensorship.org/

As much as we agree that infringing on copyrighted material should be eliminated from the web as much as possible, the cure that is being proposed and championed by the lobbying power of major copyright holding organizations like the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) will create a cure that is much worse than the disease and irrevocably damage the very nature of the internet and by extension, the future of New York.

We believe it is imperative that we stop this bill from passage!

Therefore, please join us for an Emergency NY Tech Meetup:
When: Wednesday January 18, 2012
Time 12:30-2:00PM
Where: 780 Third Ave (at 49th street) – outside the offices of New York Senators Charles Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand

What to Bring: Your bodies and your minds, your entire team, your co-workers, your friends, your family, and your social networks

Who Will Be There: Everyone who cares about the New York tech industry and the future of the web. Special guest speakers to be announced.

How to Sign Up: RSVP at http://nytm.org/sos

You Can Tweet This: I’ll be at the Emergency NY Tech Meetup on January 18 to stop SOPA and PIPA. Join us: http://nytm.org/sos #nytmSOS

Hashtag: #nytmSOS

Thank you for stepping to take action.

Signed:

Andrew Rasiej, Chairman – @rasiej
Scott Heiferman, Founder – @heif
Nate Westheimer, Executive Director – @innonate
Jessica Lawrence, Managing Director – @jessicalawrence
And the Entire NY Tech Meetup Board

Press and General Information Contact: organizer@nytm.org

05 January 2012 ~ 2 Comments

Video from January 4 NYTM

Monthly Meetup

Here’s the video from last night’s NYTM.

The lineup was: