Unfortunately, the comments of this franchisee, who represents less than 1 percent of our system and who owns restaurants in other concepts, has been portrayed as reflective of the entire Denny’s brand. I am confident his perspective is not shared by the company or hundreds of franchisees/small business owners who make up the majority of the Denny’s community. Specifically, his comments suggesting that guests might reduce the customary tip provided to their server as an offset to his proposed surcharge are inconsistent with our values and approach to business throughout our brand.Denny’s CEO John Miller • In a statement addressing the controversy surrounding Denny’s franchisee John Metz’s comments about The Affordable Care Act. A number of Denny’s locations around the country have faced boycotts and/or barrages of angry phone calls from people outraged by Metz’s suggestion of adding a “5 percent surcharge for Obamacare” to menus at locations he owns. source
We’re writing today to ask you to please boycott all Streetlight related items by not purchasing any of our records or merchandise from Victory [Record]’s website, any traditional CD stores, online third party retailers or any digital distribution service (iTunes, Amazon etc)…In regards to getting the music we make, you can buy directly from us, or, alternately, we’re sure you can find a way to get the tunes onto your computer that may not be, ahem, traditional.The band Streetlight Manifesto, encouraging piracy of its own music. Years ago, the band signed with Victory Records, but—as with several other artists on Victory—it has since taken issue with the way the label does business (“an artist-hostile, morally corrupt and generally dishonest company,” in the band’s words). So, the band’s members are encouraging fans to either purchase directly from the band, or pirate their music. “Speaking a Bit metaphorically,” the band writes,” there is a Torrent of methods to accomplish this, and Google is your always loyal friend.” (Personal anecdote: At a SM show I once attended, singer Tomas Kalnoky told the crowd something to the effect of, “If you want to steal our music, that’s fine, because that just means that some asshole who lives in a mansion can’t live in a bigger mansion”).
(Source: streetlightmanifesto.com)
PACs are commonplace for companies that lead a big, growing market and Netflix is no exception. Our PAC is a way for our employees to support candidates that understand our business and technology. It was not set up for the purpose of supporting SOPA or PIPA.Anonymous Netflix spokesperson • In a statement emailed to TPM, responding to the news that “hacktivist”-group Anonymous is calling for a boycott of the company after it announced it would be creating it’s own political action committee. According to the spokesperson, FLIXPAC was not created in order to support or rebuild SOPA/PIPA, but instead to allow the company to influence debates on “network neutrality, bandwidth caps, usage based billing and reforming the Video Privacy Protection Act.” He also called Anonymous’ claims baseless, saying, “SOPA/PIPA are dead anyway.” source (via • follow)
Not a good day to be Danica Patrick. Spurred on by a Reddit thread earlier today (we mentioned it here), a snowballing boycott against the world’s largest domain registar has picked up such tech-industry luminaries as Cheezburger Inc.’s Ben Huh and Y Combinator’s Paul Graham. And Graham’s Hacker News is currently loaded with GoDaddy-related posts tonight, including this post about how to extricate yourself from GoDaddy’s service. But while the movement is certainly noble, it’s one that could face a lot of trouble going forward. Here’s a quick summary of the challenges boycotters may face going forward:
» Who are these people? Besides China (duh), the countries are Afghanistan, Colombia, Cuba, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Kazakhstan, Morocco, Pakistan, the Philippines, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Serbia, Sudan, Tunisia, Venezuela, Vietnam and Ukraine. Most aren’t very surprising, but a couple (The Philippines, Russia) are. So why are they choosing to boycott Liu Xiaobo’s Nobel Peace Prize ceremony? Simple. China probably threatened economic retribution against countries that supported the ceremony. And China is powerful.
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