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I’ve been inspired by the Anti-SOPA protests and Clay Johnson’s book The Information Diet to see how my media consumption has changed in the last 5 years. I’m pretty close to a typical consumer, and I do play absolutely by the rules — No ripped DVDs, no pirated content, etc.

The Breakdown
Music: $30 (2006) => $150 (2011)
Film: $147 (2006) => $271 (2011)
Games: $294 (2006) => $236 (2011)
Cable: $1,308 (2006) => $828 (2011)
Total: $1,779 (2006) => $1,485 (2011)

Music: Spending went up 400% due to my Spotify subscription. I still buy the same amount of music, but I’ve added a whole new service on top.

Movies and film: 84% increase. Mostly due to streaming. I tend to watch more independent films as they have become far more accessible via streaming options. I rarely go to the theatre now as I find that experience pretty horrifying, overpriced and insulting. But it seems that I’m buying about the same amount of discs, they just cost more today. The few times I’ve been to theaters in the last 5 years have been for 3D films, but even that’s not worth the hassle.

Games: 20% decrease in video game purchases. (This is not counting consoles themselves.) I am happy to report to my investors that I play fewer games now.

Cable: Cutting the cord on Cable TV has allowed me to save almost $300 a year, while increasing my content consumption. I’m lumping TV, Internet and Cable TV together. I cut Cable TV and kept only the Internet portion a few years back and that accounts for the 37% decrease. I mostly use over-the-air antennae, Hulu, and other streaming services for my TV content. Given how much less I pay now to the cable companies, I can see why they are fighting so hard against net neutrality.

The bottom line: I have at least $300 a year in disposable entertainment spending available, but Hollywood is not working hard to take my money. They are too focused on making the new radio illegal. For example, I would pay far more per person than a movie ticket to have access to just-released movies via a HD stream at home. It’s technically easy to do, but that’s just not available.

So, Hollywood, will you please give me something to spend my money on?

We did well. It was almost too late, but the rallying cry was loud and clear — we would not let a back room, lobbyist-driven bill that will restrict free speech, hamper innovation, and jobs.

But it was too close for comfort. I’d like to sit back and savor this moment, but I feel like a man who almost got shiv’d in the back in broad daylight. I don’t feel at ease with the current state of the world.

Piracy still exists, and as long as big media believes it hurts their bottom line, their hundred-million-dollar lobbying machine will continue to peddle their Dark Arts — campaign dollars, ex-senators, and lobbyists — to pass more bills like this. Maybe next time, we won’t notice. Maybe next time, they’ll add it to another bill as an amendment. Maybe next time, they’ll have a sympathetic White House. There are too many ways for the anti-Internet Freedom lobby to win.

There’s the short-term task of actually passing an anti-piracy bill that doesn’t restrict free speech and encourages innovation. Without a viable way to shut down truly illegal actors with due process, the anti-piracy lobby will continue to assault Internet freedom — and we’ll be back here again. The Internet groups (not just companies, but users) need to sit down and talk to them. The OPEN Act is much better, but I stil have some major reservations.

Long-term, there is much work to do.

First, we need an early warning system against those who seek to cripple Internet freedoms.
We need to know when the slippery slope begins before we’re rushing down it. We need a good lead time in order to create effective defenses. Think of this also as a diplomatic mission: With the ability to bring the other side to the table, we can stop the war before it begins.

Second, we need to educate Congress and we need Congress to educate us.
This means understanding how the legislative and lobbying ecosystems work. We need to show Congress that trying to pass the bill restricting the Internet yet professing “I’m no nerd” makes them ignorant buffoons worth voting out. And that requires people in the hallways of Congress shaking hands, making friends, and talking about our needs.

Third, but not least, we need to build and coordinate engines of mobilization.
The fact that we caught this bill days from a vote caused many of us to bring out the big guns — the blackout. Without the last-minute support of Wikipedia and Google, I don’t know what the outcome would have been. Even so, many sites continued to focus on SOPA when PIPA was the urgent need, this was a fight where every call mattered, yet we didn’t get the message out right — and that was just one of many coordination errors. We need an easier way to deploy calls, emails and votes to candidates that support Internet Freedom and even rally mainstream celebrities to our cause. We need to start building lists for mobilization and coordinate the efforts.

If you get robbed, you install locks, and learn how to protect yourself. We almost got robbed, even though we had some of the elements I listed above. But clearly, it’s not a strong enough system. The next step is to start generating ideas and building an Internet Defense System.

(This post is copyright free and now in the public domain. Copy and paste the crap out of it.)

To understand any viral movement requires an understanding of the zeitgeist of their anger. Right now, thousands of sites big and tiny, have gone dark or shut down in protest of SOPA and PIPA. What’s more remarkable is that for most of us, we are engaging in a new form of protest — the Social Disobedience.

Unlike the Civil Disobedience of half a century ago, the Internet Generation (my 34-year-old self included) is using a more accessible and web-centric form of protest. The Internet Generation has virtually no money to speak of and doesn’t consider themselves influential in any way, but the groundswell of anger and frustration against censorship has encouraged a generation raised on apathy and recessions to take up arms against the powers that be. And the only arms they know of is their voices.

It would be foolish and irresponsible for politicians to ignore this form of protest. While it’s harder to ignore the protester on your doorstep, ignoring Social Disobedience will erode the social capital of any campaign — just ask any company who dealt with a user-revolt on Facebook or Twitter.

While the blackouts of Google and Wikipedia are notable and far-reaching, the insecure, unemployed graduate student expending their social capital to call attention to a political issue is the heart and soul of Social Disobedience. By leveraging their blogs, Twitter, Facebook, and their iPhones, the accidental protester is finding out just how power feels — and it feels right.

When the “young people” showed up to vote for Obama and when the “youth vote” put Ron Paul in the race — turning out and defying stereotypes — they are succeeding in their form of Social Disobedience. This is a generation that is highly educated, highly expressive and restless.

The rallying cry of the 1960′s was Love and Peace. The 2010′s brought us Openness and Free Expression. The groundswell against SOPA and PIPA isn’t just a reaction to the censorship, it’s the reaction to a real threat to these values we hold closest to our hearts. This is a generation who has seen the erosion of influence from voters to corporate interests with money. The only power that remains in the hands of this generation is their self expression, and SOPA/PIPA sought to restrict this last bastion. This is the zeitgeist of their anger.

During all my debates and interviews, it’s hard not to notice the growing chasm between those born of the Web and those born before. For men like Rupert Murdoch, the Internet is something to be controlled, feared and regulated. For the Internet Generation, it’s a rare freedom to be protected, celebrated and shared. It’s difficult to feel any sympathy for the Rupert Murdochs of the world (and their businesses) who complain that the politicians he paid changed positions in the face of voter protest. And it’s painful to watch former Senator Chris Dodd take the top job with the MPAA and call our Social Disobedience “an abuse of power“.

We can criticize the Internet Generation for being superficial, shallow and self-interested, but so is every generation in their youth. And now, we watch in awe as they flex their voices in unison in Social Disobedience.

We’re all proud of you, Internets. And don’t let anyone silence you.

It wasn’t until after I seriously contemplated suicide that I was ready to handle a $30 million check.

I closed the doors of my first start-up in the summer of 2001. I was throughly broke, depressed, and feeling the burden of losing hundreds of thousands of dollars of other people’s money. Loneliness, darkness, hopelessness… those words don’t capture the feeling of the profound self-doubt that sets in after a failure. Loneliness. Darkness. Hopelessness. Those words describe the environment of depression. Self-doubt? That shakes you to the core and starts a fracture in your identity that makes you question if you should even exist anymore.

Then, a few short months after closing up my dreams, the planes hit the Twin Towers. I was 23-years-old, just a year older than the late Ilya Zhitomirskiy of Diaspora. It started a descent down to a depth I never knew could exist. Whatever it was, it was over. I knew things would get better. It probably would get better, but I just lost the energy and will to try. Until that point, my life had been a series of struggles and successes. Life was hard, but if you worked hard, if you suffered, if you lived for your dreams, it wasn’t supposed to end this way. There were plenty of examples of winners. People were getting funding, going public, creating change. Was I not meant to be an entrepreneur? Will I never get to pursue my dreams again?

I spent a week in my room with the lights off and cut off from the world, thinking of the best way to exit this failure. Death was a good option — and it got better by the day.

I don’t remember why I left my room. The most meaningful act I performed on my long climb out was to leave that room. It was the best decision I made in my life. I left that room and I got back to my job managing a very dysfunctional Internet radio startup where I was the cause of the dysfunction. It was a actually a positive thing that I left that room to leave a really bad situation to go to a bad situation.

It wasn’t for several months that death no longer became an option, but leaving that room and dealing with reality was the best antidote to a make-belief world where life just wasn’t worth it. When I was fantasizing about death as the panacea, the harshness of reality actually helped — it presented me with problems that I could actually solve.

9 years after I left that room, I would call Brad Feld to invest $30 million in my odd-ball company. Before I picked up the phone, I thought long and hard about losing that money — every single penny of it. And I was OK with it. Failure is an option, and a real risk. Failure and risk something entrepreneurs understand well, and learn to manage. However, death isn’t an option, it’s an inevitability. And before I die, I want to take as many swings at the fence as I can.

For those of you who struggle with this, I’d encourage you to keep walking out that door everyday.

Ilya, I’m so sorry that we didn’t know. From a long line of entrepreneurs who suffered alone and quietly under our own self-doubt, I wish I could talk to you and tell you to bash the shit out of your own self-doubt, or just even slink away with your tail tucked between your legs — either way, the world would have let you take more swings at the fences.