In the last few days, we have seen countless comments on various forms of social media and received many email messages, both pro and con on this issue. While the D’Addario family is committed to protecting its trademarks and family name, that commitment does not take priority over our respect for the U.S. Constitution and our right to free speech under the First Amendment.D’Addario & Company, Inc. founder Jim D’Addario • Discussing his company’s perceived support of SOPA, as a result of having been placed on an alleged list of supporters of the act. D’Addario (which makes great guitar strings that sound really good with Cm7 chords) has dealt with numerous counterfeiting issues in the past (“7 out of 10 sets of D’Addario strings sold in Chinese music stores are fakes!”), and when his company signed onto a list asking for further help in fighting against counterfeiting, his company did not assume the result would be SOPA. We spotted his letter because he cited our defense of the companies on a list distributed by the Chamber of Commerce, but we think — again — it’s worth pointing out that when D’Addario and other companies signed onto the list, they were asking for something far different than SOPA. Protest with care. source (via • follow)
Activist site of the night: Defendtheinter.net does a great job of using visuals to tell the story of how damaging SOPA could be to the Web. Great site. You gain much more from this one visual than you might from any long screed.
From a Mediaite article:
One of the biggest legislative battles heading into next year is undeniably going to be the Stop Online Piracy Act, a bill backed by Hollywood that takes a rather strong stance on policing the internet for copyrighted material. Hundreds of companies from 3M to American Apparel are throwing their support behind the bill, including the domain registration service GoDaddy.com. GoDaddy initially published an op-ed heartily supporting the anti-pirating legislation after it was first announced. The site evenissued a statement to the House committee taking up the legislation to proudly show its support.
Now, let’s step back a second here. Why would American Apparel support SOPA? Their customers are likely way more tech-savvy than the average clothing company’s, and they’d have a lot to lose. But … wait a second, let’s take a look at the list of companies that support SOPA that’s been floating around the internet:
… Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers
Alliance of Visual Artists (AVA)
Altria Client Services
American Apparel and Footwear Association
American Association of Independent Music (A2IM)
American Board of Internal Medicine
American Federation of Musicians …
Now, here’s the Web site for the American Apparel and Footwear Association, better known as the AAFA. A quick search shows that American Apparel is in fact a member of this organization … along with thousands of other companies. (If the Chamber of Commerce is of any guide, not every member of an industry group supports what the industry group does.) But either way it’s not by any means as direct as the citation would make it seem. American Apparel has made no direct statement for or against SOPA. To put it simply, be careful with allegations, all.
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)
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:
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?
Watch: PCB gets a visual shout out on GMA’s Yahoo/Tumblr...
Wrote a thing.
Hat tip to this headline writer.
Congrats Tumblr!
Don’t screw this up Yahoo.
In 2007, I was...
I started tumblr when I was at one of the lowest points of...
NPR’s report on SOPA seems to do a good job of burying the lede. “To promote cybersecurity”?
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.
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.
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