I think that the backlash against their support was a lot more swift and severe than they’d anticipated. Their initially glib ‘lol, whatever’ response was replaced by ‘oh god, please stop punching us in the quarterly financial report!’ real fast.Mashable chief architect Chris Heald • Discussing how he received a call from GoDaddy regarding his decision to move 50+ domains to a different service in a boycott of their now-reversed stance on SOPA. Apparently he wasn’t alone. So the real question, then, is whether it’s too late for GoDaddy to get all those customers back. Based on the fact that Heald isn’t budging, and the fact that they called two days before Christmas, signs aren’t looking good for the company. source (via • follow)
Good work, Internet: GoDaddy has rescinded their support of SOPA. ”Fighting online piracy is of the utmost importance, which is why GoDaddy has been working to help craft revisions to this legislation - but we can clearly do better,” said Warren Adelman, GoDaddy’s CEO. “It’s very important that all Internet stakeholders work together on this. Getting it right is worth the wait. GoDaddy will support it when and if the Internet community supports it.” The company says it had been working closely with its general counsel, Christine Jones, on hepling to mold and revise the legislation — prior to now.
joost5 says: Most of the Redditors responding to the boycott are tech-savvy and ready. GoDaddy will end up feeling the sting of being on the wrong side of this issue. But even if they don’t respond, leaving GoDaddy is the right thing to do.
» SFB says: Yep, that’s exactly true, and they certainly will. But ultimately, your first point is the most salient: People who post at sites like Reddit or Hacker News are on a whole more likely to be aware of issues like this. Those aren’t the people who need to be reached, however. The people who need to be reached are the ones who are more likely to see Danica Patrick’s car on TV than a meme from Reddit. They don’t know what SOPA is, and if they did, they might understand the larger issue enough to boycott. Remember, 50 million domains go through GoDaddy; they can stand to lose a few thousand if it helps their bottom line. — Ernie @ SFB
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:
People upset with the Stop Online Piracy Act have a small reason to cheer this morning. The anti-piracy bill, which many Internet users feel could have a chilling effect on the Web, got tabled until early next year, giving a brief respite and an opportunity for alternative bills (such as Rep. Darrell Issa’s OPEN act) to gain footing. Being a creative bunch, many users have taken to design tricks, boycotts, even music to protest what they feel is a dangerous bill. Here are just a few examples of SOPA protests online:
Earlier this week, we posted this wonderful Vice Magazine piece called ”Dear Congress: It Is No Longer OK To Not Know How the Internet Works,” which took Congress to task for not understanding the ramifications of SOPA and bending too quickly to lobbyists. But a funny thing happened on the way to ripping Congress a new one: Clay Johnson wrote a brilliant response titled “Dear Internet: It’s No Longer OK to Not Know How Congress Works,” in which he points out the structural problems that might cause Congress to focus more on lobbyists than actual constituents. “Lobbyists can manage the attention of our Representatives because they have the time and the resources,” Johnson writes. “But I’ve never met a member of Congress who liked constantly begging for money so that they could get re-elected. Nobody wants that.” He points out that this horrifically-designed software above, a Lockheed Martin product called Intranet Quorum, is how Congress reads constituent letters, and that contracts prevent them from going with something else. Not nearly as sexy as Gmail, is it? No wonder lobbyists get more mindshare than voters, right? There is a huge lesson here to take from BOTH articles. Read them both, if you haven’t. (EDIT: We got a good response to this, which we wrote back to.)
The fact that there was any debate over whether to call in experts on such a matter should tell you something about the integrity of Congress. It’d be one thing if legitimate technical questions directed at the bill’s supporters weren’t met with either silence or veiled accusations that the other side was sympathetic to piracy. Yet here we are with a group of elected officials openly supporting a bill they can’t explain, and having the temerity to suggest there’s no need to “bring in the nerds” to suss out what’s actually on it… The chilling takeaway of this whole debacle was the irrefutable air of anti-intellectualism; that inescapable absurdity that we have members of Congress voting on a technical bill who do not posses any technical knowledge on the subject and do not find it imperative to recognize those who do.Joshua Kopstein, Dear Congress, It’s No Longer OK To Not Know How The Internet Works (via drinkyourjuice)
This used to be funny, but now it’s really just terrifying. We’re dealing with legislation that will completely change the face of the internet and free speech for years to come. Yet here we are, still at the mercy of underachieving Congressional know-nothings that have more in common with the slacker students sitting in the back of math class than elected representatives. The fact that some of the people charged with representing us must be dragged kicking and screaming out of their complacency on such matters is no longer endearing — it’s just pathetic and sad.
A few months ago, the Italian Wikipedia community made a decision to blank all of Italian Wikipedia for a short period in order to protest a law which would infringe on their editorial independence. The Italian Parliament backed down immediately. As Wikipedians may or may not be aware, a much worse law going under the misleading title of “Stop Online Piracy Act’ is working its way through Congress on a bit of a fast track. I may be attending a meeting at the White House on Monday (pending confirmation on a couple of fronts) along with executives from many other top Internet firms, and I thought this would be a good time to take a quick reading of the community feeling on this issue. My own view is that a community strike was very powerful and successful in Italy and could be even more powerful in this case. There are obviously many questions about whether the strike should be geotargetted (US-only), etc. (One possible view is that because the law would seriously impact the functioning of Wikipedia for everyone, a global strike of at least the English Wikipedia would put the maximum pressure on the US government.) At the same time, it’s of course a very very big deal to do something like this, it is unprecedented for English Wikipedia. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jimbo Wales (talk • contribs) 07:42, 10 December 2011
Thoughts, all: Crazy, or crazy enough to work?
NPR’s report on SOPA seems to do a good job of burying the lede. “To promote cybersecurity”?
I’m moving back to New York in a few days. Unlike past...
OMG. I got so...
In this week’s Newsweek, a little...
Tumblr this morning. [h/t anne]
#@#$%!.tumblr.com
Here’s a hidden feature that shipped in...
So, it appears TechDirt picked up that letter that leaked from NBC Universal trying to strongarm its suppliers into supporting SOPA. We spent a few days researching that one.
Decades of evidence from around the globe all show the same thing: making copyright law or enforcement stricter does not work. It does not decrease infringement at all — and, quite frequently, leads to more infringement.From TechDirt’s article on PROTECT-IP and SOPA, titled “The Definitive Post On Why SOPA And Protect IP Are Bad, Bad Ideas.” If you had to cut down the entire argument to two sentences, these two are the ticket. By the way, in case you missed it the other night, there’s a letter floating around, allegedly sent by NBC Universal to its suppliers, attempting to strongarm them into supporting SOPA. Chew on that while you’re eating your breakfast of turkey and stuffing.
We are writing to ask you for help on an issue that is one our top business priorities – content theft on the Internet, which is a major threat to the strength of our business. Our major guilds and unions are joining us in the fight to keep our businesses strong so that the tidal wave of content theft does not kill jobs. But if the current trend continues, it’s not too strong to say that this threat could adversely affect our business relationship with you.
Thanks to Google+ user Emmett Lollis for putting it up. We’re looking to see if we can find any other details about the letter and confirm it’s real. The letter seems focused on entertainment content over news content. EDIT: The letter’s original source appears to be an anonymous comment on TorrentFreak. Phone numbers are listed on the letter; will offer up more info as we get.
Second update: Some checks on names; Phil Tahtakran is listed as a lobbyist for Comcast and General Electric, who together own NBC Universal. John McCay’s public LinkedIn profile shows that he is the “Vice President, Corporate Communications at NBC Universal.” Called both numbers listed, and they led to voicemails for each person.
Third update: NBC Universal does use outside suppliers and they do have their own online portal.
Fourth update: Via Google+ user Occupy Updates, here’s an e-mail thread involving McCay and others attempting to launch an anti-piracy campaign last year. TechDirt did the dirty work on this one, including filing a FOIA request.
sinful-nature-deactivated201206 asks: I dont get why people are being complacent about the IP ACT. We must be more demonstrative. The internet is the one place where we all can be ourselves without guidelines on who we are. Why are people not signing the petition? Why are people not recognizing that this is infringing on the last option of freedom we have as individuals. If the gov't gains the right to infiltrate every aspect of our lives we lose the very thing that makes us who we are. The minority to majority.
» SFB says: The thing is, for many people, it’s a bit of a disconnect to see what PROTECT-IP and SOPA are capable of. And while we can understand apathy (it’s nothing new; see voting levels among 18-24s), but sometimes they need to see the effects of something like that need to be hammered down to the most basic form — something which Tumblr did quite effectively on Wednesday with their remarkable blacking-out of the site and political campaign. Too much stuff happens right under our nose. It’s hard to look away when you’re having fun. And I guess that what I find about the best Tumblrs is that they realize most people are like this and use this to their advantage — by doing the opposite. Don’t pull the wool over our eyes. Make it clear. — Ernie @ SFB (It’s our Office Hours! Shoot us a question over here.)
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