“There are a lot of people, a lot of powerful people, who want to clamp down on the Internet. And to be honest, there aren’t a whole lot who have a vested interest in protecting it from all of that.”
Freedom to Connect speech (2012)
Context: The people rose up, and they caused a sea change in Washington — not the press, which refused to cover the story — just coincidentally, their parent companies all happened to be lobbying for the bill; not the politicians, who were pretty much unanimously in favor of it; and not the companies, who had all but given up trying to stop it and decided it was inevitable. It was really stopped by the people, the people themselves. They killed the bill dead, so dead that when members of Congress propose something now that even touches the Internet, they have to give a long speech beforehand about how it is definitely not like SOPA; so dead that when you ask congressional staffers about it, they groan and shake their heads like it’s all a bad dream they’re trying really hard to forget; so dead that it’s kind of hard to believe this story, hard to remember how close it all came to actually passing, hard to remember how this could have gone any other way. But it wasn’t a dream or a nightmare; it was all very real.
And it will happen again. Sure, it will have yet another name, and maybe a different excuse, and probably do its damage in a different way. But make no mistake: The enemies of the freedom to connect have not disappeared. The fire in those politicians’ eyes hasn’t been put out. There are a lot of people, a lot of powerful people, who want to clamp down on the Internet. And to be honest, there aren’t a whole lot who have a vested interest in protecting it from all of that. Even some of the biggest companies, some of the biggest Internet companies, to put it frankly, would benefit from a world in which their little competitors could get censored. We can’t let that happen.
Help us to complete the source, original and additional information
Aaron Swartz 16
computer programmer and internet-political activist 1986–2013Related quotes

Variant: Everyone wants to ride with you in the limo, but what you want is someone who will take the bus with you when the limo breaks down.

“Scientists are an agnostic lot, of course—well, most educated people are, aren’t they?”
Waiting for the Olympians (p. 269)
Platinum Pohl (2005)

VentureBeat: "Mary Meeker’s annual valentine to Silicon Valley reminds us tech utopianism is alive and well" https://venturebeat.com/2018/06/15/mary-meekers-annual-valentine-to-silicon-valley-reminds-us-tech-utopianism-is-alive-and-well/ (15 June 2018)

When asked "What do you think of being called a god?" in "Heavenly Father of the NET", an interview article in NetWorker (Summer 1997); This refers to a statement "if the Net does have a god, he is probably Jon Postel", which appeared in the British magazine The Economist.
Context: I think they called me the closest thing to a God of the Internet. But at the end, that article wasn’t very complimentary, because the author suggested that I wasn’t doing a very good job, and that I ought to be replaced by a "professional."
Of course, there isn’t any "God of the Internet." The Internet works because a lot of people cooperate to do things together.
On experimenting as a playwright in “Playwright Kristoffer Diaz steps into the ring” https://www.latimes.com/entertainment/la-xpm-2011-aug-21-la-ca-chad-deity-20110821-story.html in the Los Angeles Times (2011 Aug 21)

“People say, "I want to get laid a lot and make lots of money."”
That's not the right order.
What I've Learned (July 2002)

These are foolish people.
Google's Eric Schmidt calls for 'spell-checkers for hate and harassment' https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/dec/08/googles-eric-schmidt-spell-checkers-hate-harassment-terrorism, 8 December 2015, by Alex Hern.
2015