Senator Maria Cantwell (D-WA) was the latest guest to appear in the Zillow Speaker Series and her timing couldn’t have been more apt.
As a strong opponent of the Stop Online Privacy Act (SOPA), Cantwell spoke to Zillow employees on the very day Congress recalled the controversial SOPA bill.
“Mark one down for the Internet,” said Cantwell.
Designed to protect copyrighted intellectual property and counterfeit goods, the SOPA bill received an onslaught of protests from the Internet community, including Wikipedia, Google and several other sites, claiming the legislature would threaten free speech and give law enforcement the ability to shut down entire domains.
She congratulated the Internet for mobilizing and spoke to the hope that someday government would be able to react and operate the way the Web and tech companies do.
“We need to reinvent government in a whole lot of ways [and] invent whole new ways of attacking our problems,” she said.
Cantwell speaks from experience. Prior to her past ten years in Congress, Cantwell worked in marketing and then as vice president of RealNetworks.
She’s spent two terms as a U.S. Senator from Washington state and will be running for re-election in Fall of 2012. Like many, her goal is to strengthen the economy.
“Jobs, jobs, jobs!” she emphasized.
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Previous Z Speaker Series guests include: