7 ms·
Internet giants place full-page anti-SOPA ad in NYT
- swasheck 15y agoWell played, MS and Apple.
- chollida1 15y agoI don't want this to sound snarky but.... Do you know that they were invited and declined? is it possible that no one asked them to join, or declined to let them join?
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- rzbn 15y agoI think they weren't invited as all the companies in the list are strictly internet companies.
- yahelc 15y agoIt's certainly in Apple's interest that this pass. Less piracy -> More iTunes customers. More iTunes customers -> More iOS devices sold. More iOS devices sold -> More profit for Apple.
- JoshTriplett 15y agoThese bills would also allow someone to demand the takedown of the entire iTunes store over a single allegation of copyright infringement in a single app. Consider how much trouble they've had with patent trolls in the past.
- yahelc 15y agoiTunes Store != App Store
- fpgeek 15y agoWhat about iCloud? Wouldn't they be liable for every song, every photo, every video, every document their users store? Maybe they've got songs (mostly) covered via the agreements for iTunes Match, but the rest seem hard to pull off (especially since, IIRC, taking a picture (or video) of a copyrighted painting, sculpture, etc. can be infringement in some cases).
- masonlee 15y agoiCloud doesn't enable public sharing. It's a personal backup system.
- swasheck 15y agoThank you for the correction. I don't know that but just assumed (and yes, I know what that leads to :)) that they opted out given the collective weight of the other orgs involved.
- Hates_ 15y agoThey are in a totally different market. Why would they be a signee?
- thematt 15y agoWhat are you talking about? Microsoft is in the same market as at least 5 of those companies listed.
- jrockway 15y agoSOPA is largely an anti-counterfeiting bill. Microsoft does not want people to be able to buy counterfeit versions of Windows, so they support this bill. Google, on the other hand, doesn't make anything that can be counterfeited, so they have nothing to gain from this bill. They do have a lot to lose (with all the censorship provisions), so they are taking a stand against the bill.
- un1xl0ser 15y agoI agree that's what they are pushing it for, but they seem to want to apply the same hammers to counterfeiting of physical goods and digital copyright infringement. Physical goods and media are very different. The lost-income argument of this needs to be battled, because I doubt that everyone buying fake rolexes at $200 each is going to be saving up for the real deal. I have to assume that the same type of arguments are propping up this debate. I want to know where the people that support this get these numbers from. Do people really think that by passing this legislation we will somehow get money for nothing? Does anyone really think that this won't be applied to Wikileaks and the like...
- waqf 15y ago> SOPA is ostensibly an anti-counterfeiting bill. ... FTFY.
- rbanffy 15y agoImagine Microsoft being able to block Google at the DNS level because Android infringes on their IP. Imagine Apple wielding the same power against Samsung and every retailer carrying Samsung phones. They may never use that power, but it would certainly make negotiating much easier.
- pixcavator 15y agoAnd Amazon.
- yesbabyyes 15y agoMicrosoft is a supporter of SOPA: http://www.opencongress.org/bill/112-s968/money http://www.opencongress.org/bill/112-s968/money
- mikemoka 15y agoWeb companies should know how to write a readable text, it's pity they could just come up with something like that. This text is not coincise, it doesn't draw the attention of the reader to any specific point and it shows several other shortcomings, if the message ever comes across I am pretty sure this page won't help.
- thomasgerbe 15y agoYes, they could've come up with one or two sentences that appealed to the emotion and pushed the reader to a custom url relating to this issue. Or even an exaggerated screenshot of what could happen if the bill passes. Ah well. Rational writeups are all fine and good but not when you probably have a split second to capture the attention with an ad.
- lancewiggs 15y agoIt's aimed at the committee members, not the average punter, and it is serious because an emotional non-fact-based driven approach would backfire. The NYTimes location hints at the power they have to do more.
- prawn 15y agoIt might just be that verbose text does more to differentiate this from normal advertising, and perhaps enforce the impression of these companies writing from a position of expertise. Large image, looks like advertising, easy to overlook. Dense columns of text, looks like bland content, easy to overlook. Ogilvy-styled image, headline and text, looks like advertising. Headline and then text that looks like the letter it is, hey, let me just skim this and see what these guys are upset about. Wow, Facebook and Twitter. And so it goes.
- lambda 15y agoSometimes, longer, more thoughtful text can be more powerful than short, punchy advertising copy.
- Igor_Bratnikov 15y agoGlad to see a public stance by the internet community
- ck2 15y agoWhere is the url in there for more information/followup? Wasted opportunity. I don't mean to diminish this effort but just imagine this kind of response every time we decided to declare war somewhere far far away. I'd be impressed. Certainly sending people to be maimed or killed is just as critical?
- philwelch 15y agoDon't you remember the momentous uproar over Iraq? There were non-stop protests for at least a year before the war actually started, and for years afterwards. There were no similar protests over Kosovo, Afghanistan, and Libya because the US was only providing air support, and because Afghanistan started only a month after 9/11 and everyone was still shocked and compliant.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- Vivtek 15y agock2 probably doesn't remember the momentous uproar over Iraq because the media was not at all interested in covering the protests. Unless you were in a city where a protest was going on and physically saw it, it basically didn't happen. And there were protests over Afghanistan; I participated in some myself. We weren't all shocked and compliant - the first thing I said upon seeing burning towers on the TV at the Indiana University Student Union was "Reichstag", and I wasn't wrong.
- philwelch 15y agoThere are protests over everything at all times. That's why the media doesn't cover them. They aren't news. There are crowds of demonstrators in every major city, outside of every abortion clinic, and on the National Mall in DC 24 hours a day. The Iraq protests were the largest protest movement in decades and lasted for years. It really wasn't difficult to find out about them. > the first thing I said upon seeing burning towers on the TV at the Indiana University Student Union was "Reichstag", and I wasn't wrong. Well, there's always someone comparing the current administration to Nazis....
- jamiequint 15y agoThere was also a full page ad in today's Wall Street Journal, same letter. http://pic.twitter.com/jisFPt4s http://pic.twitter.com/jisFPt4s
- jpdoctor 15y agoFull page ad? Big deal. Obviously they screwed up by not buying a bunch of senators and congressman. Fools.
- protomyth 15y agoThe tech industry has enough money to buy 10x more lobbyists than the entertainment industry. This would be a wiser investment than the ads.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- redthrowaway 15y agoOr they could just buy controlling shares of a majority of mpaa members and end this silliness for good.
- teej 15y agoI know it may seem that way on the surface, but the proponents of this bill are larger than you think. The MPAA represents companies with a combined market cap of $250 billion dollars. That's small enough for us to beat, but Pfizer ($150bn market cap) and Microsoft ($220bn market cap) are also major proponents. All together, there's a LOT of muscle behind this act, lobbyists alone aren't going to cut it.
- meterplech 15y agoNot to sound naive here- but why does Microsoft support this if all the others don't?
- _delirium 15y agoThe Business Software Alliance (BSA) seems to be in favor: http://www.bsa.org/country/News%20and%20Events/News%20Archives/en/2011/en-10262011-smithbill.aspx http://www.bsa.org/country/News%20and%20Events/News%20Archiv... Its members are made up of mainly non-web technology companies that sell expensive products and are worried about piracy or counterfeiting of those products: Oracle, Microsoft, Adobe, Intuit, Symantec, etc. Conversely, they don't run user-generated-content sites like YouTube or Facebook, so aren't worried about the problems with weakening safe harbors.
- therandomguy 15y agoI wonder if we can start a site called PoliticiansAgainstInternet.org, get it a lot of publicity and sway the votes away from them. It should be so popular that politicians will dread getting on that list. Maybe Anon can dig up more dirt and expose it on there?
- therandomguy 15y ago*not sure how to edit the comment, hence replying. The site would have "pay to promote button". People who care keeps donating which will directly fuel the ad campaigns set up on adsense, facebook ads, twitter promoted links etc. It will be all over the place.
- thematt 15y agoIf Google was serious they'd put something on their front page. The readership of the New York Times is nothing compared to Google's traffic.
- jrockway 15y agoWith great power comes great responsibility. If Google uses their core product for every political battle they need to engage in, it cheapens the brand. SOPA is evil, but it's not going to severely injure Google. So it's not worth cheapening their product for.
- redthrowaway 15y agoWhile I agree with you that they need to be careful not to cheapen their brand, I'd argue that they have a history of displaying custom doodles for far less significant things. A simple "stop censorship" doodle, akin to those being displayed by a number of other websites, would go a long way without cheapening Google's brand.
- jrockway 15y ago"Merry Christmas" is a very different message from "Get rid of a law that will cause us to make less money".
- enmaku 15y agoMore like "stop a bill from being passed into law which may shut down us and the rest of the internet as you know it" - do you have any idea how much labor it would take to be a search engine, video site or social networking site if you were liable for the legal status of all user-created content? Practically every site you use would go under, including the one we're on right now.
- bluedanieru 15y agoWell, that's not how it would happen of course. It's actually worse than you think. If the law were used like you propose, there would be a massive outcry to the point that it would have to be invalidated. Instead, it will be selectively enforced, like everything else these days, in the interest of maintaining power and control for the parties that have purchased this law from their government. Of course, in ten years time it could have an industry-wide chilling effect much like the DMCA, however in the meantime that will not happen. That's not how you introduce creeping, malicious legislation, and the folks responsible for this know that, of course.
- artursapek 15y agoVery nice. It's a nice touch that the logos at the bottom are in alphabetical order. I want a copy of this
- bobbles 15y ago95% of people would look at that wall of text and turn the page.. they really needed something that would actually draw in peoples attention if they want it to get noticed
- krschultz 15y agoThe 5% that read it are the ones who influence policy in Washington. The most powerful thing on that page is not the text - it's the logos on the bottom. The average senator can not tell you the difference between a DNS server and a Warez server, but they know who Facebook, Google, eBay, et al are. Remember, there are a lot of people out there who go to Google and type in www.gmail.com into the search box on a daily basis. To them, Google IS the internet.
- bobbles 15y agoI was just thinking about it and I'm sure if all the page said was 'Stop SOPA' and had all of those logos there.. I would be wanting to find out more about the issue.
- d0mine 15y agoThe irony. The giants of Internet advertising spread their message via dead-tree paper ads.
- qsun 15y agobecause dead-tree paper is cheaper
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- baby 15y agoWhat is also impressive is the presence of Zynga in the internet giants club.
- myoder 15y agoI was thinking the exact same thing!
- wtvanhest 15y agoI was thinking the opposite. Outside of Silicon Valley people say things like, you know Zynga... the company that made farmville. People think it is a 1 employee company. (I know they have a $B+ valuation, but no one outside the valley does, especially not law makers)
- muppetman 15y agoThis is great. It's just a shame the last time anyone picked up a paper was about 10 years ago. Can't argue with the sentiment though.
- grandalf 15y agoIf you're in the tech industry and you realize how stupid this proposed law is, realize that it's no more stupid than the vast majority of laws passed by congress, you're just better equipped to judge it.
- JoshTriplett 15y ago"when a respected information source covers something where you have on-the-ground experience, the result is often to make you wonder how much fecal matter you’ve swallowed in areas outside your own expertise." -- Rusty Russell
- damoncali 15y agoAm I the only one that did a double-take when I saw Zynga on there?
- westbywest 15y agoTheir relationship with Facebook probably influenced (compelled?) them to sign onto this. Indeed, one could imagine a potential copyright infringement complaint leveled at Zygna by Paramount, claiming that "Mafia Wars" borrows too heavily from the "Godfather" films. Completely frivolous, indeed, but possibly threatening enough to Zygna's daily operations for them to heed warnings about these bills.
- muppetman 15y agoI was a bit surprised too. I certainly don't count them in the same league as the others mentioned.
- cynest 15y agoWhy not Zynga? Their demographic is not piratically inclined and due to the nature of their product piracy is probably not an issue to an extent it is for hollywood. However, their existence is at least for the moment linked to facebook. Anything that threatens facebook threatens zynga. If facebook has to police their users' content, you can bet at least some of the necessary money will come from facebook's cut of zynga's profits. Also, this is publicity right before their IPO.
- dylangs1030 15y agoDespite their recent PR blunder (and what a blunder it was), they're still considered a tech giant. Their IPO passed a billion benchmark, so they are in a position to say, "Hey, look at us, we kinda know a thing or two about the internet."
- damoncali 15y agoGiant? There are a bajillion small tech companies across the country that make more money than that.
- sidwyn 15y agoBesides the gist of the ad, I noticed that Facebook did not use their logo without a background (AOL too).
- roxtar 15y agoDid anyone notice the missing Godzilla-head in Mozilla's logo?
- dmboyd 15y ago> We support the bills’ stated goals "providing additional enforcement tools to combat foreign "rogue" websites that are dedicated to copyright infringement or counterfeiting"... Why doesn't anyone just call bullshit on the whole concept of the US extending its law to apply to the rest of the world?
- dylangs1030 15y agoWell, because while that's a popular theme in United States history, it's not relevant here. The websites in other countries would not be literally sued into oblivion if their servers aren't in U.S. territory - they'd be blocked via DNS intervention. So, really, the United States wouldn't be extending its law to apply anywhere else but the United States. It would be blocking what content is viewable within the borders. But this isn't even the real issue - because you can still bypass this using the IP address directly instead of the domain name. The real issue is the corporate abuses which could be allowed to take place within our borders if websites aren't deemed to be doing enough. It could make the internet environment tyrannical in content control for fear of websites being shut down.
- natch 15y agoA TLDR skim of this ad by the average NYT reader will see only this: We support the bill. Yes, I omitted the words "goals of the" [edit: 's stated goals] but I'm talking about what the average reader will get out of the ad before they flip to the next page. Not good, imho. And yes, they do care about the average reader. If they were trying to reach people other than the average reader, there are better ways to do that.
- lotu 15y agoThat is irrelevant as the average NYT reader is not the target of this ad. This ad is a letter to the people listed in the first line, delivered to them via the NYT. Unlike a letter which will be handled by an intern this letter will be read directly by the congressmen it is addressed to, and by spending the money for the full page ad they express who serious they are about this.
- natch 15y agoThen it's even worse, because the average congressperson is not nearly as bright as the average NYT reader.
- skb_ 15y agoI've been thinking a bit about this and it's more a detriment to the United States than it is to the Internet. Censorship is a losing battle, especially with an educated public. There's just no way that this can work, it's a perpetual cat and mouse at best. I feel that SOPA will pass, there's no doubt in my mind - it will just be a much watered down version, much like any other bill that passes these days. Even this so-called "anti-SOPA" ad is not really anti-SOPA, it just disagrees with certain aspects of the bill. They're basically asking for a compromise and they'll get it. There will probably be a long and expensive process in order to shut sites down. There will probably be some clauses about staying up if you are compliant with take-down notices. And there will probably be more bureaucrats added to the system, with jobs that are essentially useless and another needless expense. Ultimately, it will be like the War on Drugs, War on Terror, TSA and what have you; some far-fetched, pie in the sky plan that never had a chance of working in the first place. The sad part is that people in Washington don't understand the consequences of what they are doing. They seem to think they have a blank check to play around with. Slowly but surely, they add things like this and the government gets bigger and more expensive to run. You can't just fire bureaucrats, they have a knack for sticking around. I can't help but feel like I'm watching the slow death of a once great nation. I haven't heard anything lately coming out of Capitol Hill that has any semblance of intelligence.
- theoj 15y ago>> And there will probably be more bureaucrats added to the system, with jobs that are essentially useless and another needless expense. This is really twisted. The industry is taking something it wants to do -- draconian copyright enforcement -- and passing that activity (plus the cost) to taxpayers. The system is broken. You can clearly see that when special interest groups that represent a small minority can get taxpayer money and spend it against the majority while at the same time getting the majority to pay.
- tomjen3 15y agoIf that is the kind of ads tech giants make, then we have all lost. This needs more Don Draper and less wall of text. It needs to tell a compelling story with a righteous underdog fighting the good fight which would be squashed if this law passes. It needs to paint anybody who support it as a traitor to America(TH). And it needs to rebrand it the "Killing the American Dream Act" so that nobody can politically afford to support it.
- marquis 15y agoJust posted: Republican Darrell Issa says "it has no chance of passage". http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/11/17/idUS402801936220111117 http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/11/17/idUS40280193622011...
- panthera 15y agoThe ad proves the old maxim true: "Everyone's a reactionary against something they know about." Nearly all of the companies listed in this ad were heavy donors to the Obama administration. Now they understand what their donation got them. Everyone in the Internet industry feels extreme pain when these regulations are proposed, and rightly so. SOPA is an insane example of a bankrupt government flailing about. However, the same commentariat thinks that regulation is somehow "necessary" in medicine, law, or energy. ("<Calamity-of-the-day> could have been prevented if we just had more rules on the books! Surely the evil profit-making corporations would cut every corner they could, just to make a buck! It's not like taking it in the shorts every single day in the press will hit their stock price!") Once you've tasted government intervention in your industry, you'll want some mouthwash.
- i386 15y agoIts simple to think that regulation is good and bad if you generalize and say that no industry should/should not be regulated just because it causes inconvenience. Regulation should be in place to put safeties into a system. What i mean by that is don't let people "cheat" too much. By cheating the reasonable bounds of the system the whole system would suffer (people dying, civil liberties slashed or financial systems collapsing). That said industries you would want tight regulation on is in the food or medical industries. Nothing is black and white but always varying shades of grey.
- iradik 15y agoHuh. Google should take out an ad on its front page! Maybe censor all requests coming from the .gov domains.
- katesmith098 15y agoYou want to make $85 hourly and $7000 per month like me just working on laptop for few hours! Would you like to be your own boss!Opportunities like this don't come by often. Don't let this one pass you by! CashHuge. com