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PG, if you're reading this, I don't know which list you saw, but here's one with SOPA supporters that is probably the most comprehensive: http://www.digitaltre

PG, if you're reading this, I don't know which list you saw, but here's one with SOPA supporters that is probably the most comprehensive: http://www.digitaltrends.com/opinion/the-439-organizations-sopa-opponents-should-worry-about/ http://www.digitaltrends.com/opinion/the-439-organizations-s...

mrlase 15y ago
Some of these companies are just so random... Why, for instance, does Adidas, L'Oreal, American Apparel, Rite Aid, Pfizer, etc. even have a stance on SOPA? I was rather disconcerted to see that Elsevier was on this list :(
- marshray 15y ago
  Because they lose money to counterfeit knock offs. There are people who would sell their country's freedom for a handful of cash. I consider them un-American traitors.
  - mekoka 15y ago
    Because they lose money to counterfeit knock offs. Your assumption is that if someone doesn't buy knock offs, they'll buy the real thing. Until that can be proven true, I think a better reformulation which more accurately translates the greed of these corporations is Because they feel they're not making more money due to counterfeit knock offs. The companies themselves aren't actually losing anything.
    - marshray 15y ago
      I agree that is more accurate. I thought about writing that but didn't want to slice the language so thin that it distracted from the main point.
    - dextorious 15y ago
      """Your assumption is that if someone doesn't buy knock offs, they'll buy the real thing. Until that can be proven true""" I keep hearing that argument in discussions about counterfeiting/piracy. Does it convince anyone? Yes, lots of people would buy the real thing X if there was no way to buy X's knock offs. It only depends on a) how much they want something X-like and b) the relative price. If (1) something X-like is desirable, and (2) the price of X's knock offs is near the price of X (so that people not affording X at all is not an issue), then people WOULD buy the original if they couldn't get a cheaper knockoff. Does even one person's money lost qualify the issue as "proven"? Because I know that I have downloaded albums and books that I would DEFINITELY have bought if I could not get them for free of the intertubes.
    - codyrobbins 15y ago
      No, I don’t think that’s the reason why fashion brands are against knock-offs. They don’t necessarily expect that everyone who buys a counterfeit will buy the real thing. Instead, a market glutted with counterfeit products dilutes their brand and reflects poorly on the quality of their merchandise because consumers confuse the knock-off with the real thing. And that most certainly does lose them something. A Chanel handbag is a luxury item that, in part, is desirable simply because of its expense and thus relative scarcity—not everyone can have one. Lifestyles brands are built in large part around a carefully crafted image of their consumer, and when every 19 year old Starbucks barista making $21K/year is walking around with a knock-off Chanel handbag it’s difficult to maintain the image they’re going for. Sales drop as the real consumers flee the brand, and then the company has no choice but to market to a lower demographic. Counterfeits undermine the company by commoditizing their goods. Since fashion brands have significantly more limited legal protections for their products than other industries, I don’t see how you could expect them to be against an act that stands to enlarge the remedies available to them to protect their brands. It was shortsighted for the media companies to try to take a sledgehammer to the Internet—since what they sell are inherently digital products for which it was inevitable that distribution would move to the Internet eventually—but apparel is a physical product that isn’t in any danger of having that happen. For that reason apparel companies don’t care about the Internet (just like you probably don’t care very much about apparel), and I can’t say I could really blame them. This isn’t even to mention the fact that fashion design is an art, and having opportunists steal your design, completely mangle it in an attempt to make it cheaper, and then sell it as an original is in all likelihood an incredibly infuriating thing simply from the perspective of artistic purity. Again, I find it hard to blame them for wanting to stop this, given that how well the Internet works is largely irrelevant to practically everyone in the entire industry.
      - michaels0620 15y ago
        There was an article (that I now cannot find) that claimed there was a positive effect of counterfeiting for high end fashion brands because it motivated buyers to more quickly move on to the latest version. Someone who is willing to spend $700 on a hand bag will get a newer version rather than hold onto the one they have when they see anyone and everyone sporting it.
  - Iv 15y ago
    In their case, I rather think they are uninterested in the provisions about internet and would support removal of these clauses if this could help SOPA to pass.
  - fredBuddemeyer 15y ago
    selling a country's freedom? un-american? its hard to even conceive what on earth this means or how your consideration of what is american - or treason - means anything. and adidas is german.
  - pbhjpbhj 15y ago
    >"There are people who would sell their country's freedom for a handful of cash." Do you have to be US American to hold stock in these companies? Do you expect international companies to have a nationality?
- skymt 15y ago
  SOPA isn't just about copyright: the blacklist is also intended to be used against foreign product counterfeiters, and fashion, drugs & shoes are among the most counterfeited products.
- burgerbrain 15y ago
  Probably because they want to use SOPA to shut down websites selling "counterfeit" merchandise.
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
- darkane 15y ago
  The push for these bills really started years ago when pharma companies were desperately trying to prevent the purchase of drugs from Canada and other countries. The entertainment aspect is rather new and actually somewhat secondary.
  - waqf 15y ago
    "somewhat secondary" ... that's what the MPAA etc. want Congress to think, so that their Internet-destroying legislation gets in under the radar.
- waqf 15y ago
  > I was rather disconcerted to see that Elsevier was on this list :( Back when I was in academia, Elsevier had a clear reputation as the most "evil" academic publisher, because of its extortionate journal prices and its active resistance to any method of information dissemination which would reduce its profits (for example, lower-cost online access, or friendlier contracts with its authors). See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elsevier#Criticism_and_controversies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elsevier#Criticism_and_controv.... Apparently nothing's changed.
  - mrlase 15y ago
    Wow, I wasn't aware of this. I'm still a student but it seems that about 1 out of every 2 journal articles is by an Elsevier owned journal. I'll have to keep note of that for the future.
- shortformblog 15y ago
  FYI: That isn't American Apparel on the list — it's an industry group with a similar name that just so happens to count American Apparel as a member — amongst thousands of others. http://shortformblog.tumblr.com/post/14732754002/sopa-american-apparel http://shortformblog.tumblr.com/post/14732754002/sopa-americ... Now's a good time to emphasize that not everything an industry group does is supported by individual members.
samstave 15y ago
Here is the one directly from the SOPA .gov site: http://judiciary.house.gov/issues/Rouge%20Websites/SOPA%20Supporters.pdf http://judiciary.house.gov/issues/Rouge%20Websites/SOPA%20Su...
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
- nickolai 15y ago
  >judiciary.house.gov/issues/Rouge%20Websites/SOPA%20Supporters.pdf 'Rouge websites'... Really ? How about figuring out that spelling thing before trying to pass legislation... Or did we miss something and all this SOPA fuss is actually about misspelled counterfeit cosmetics exclusively?
- scrod 15y ago
  Take a look at the front page of the committee's web site: >Markup Shows Strong Support for SOPA (12/16/2011) >SOPA Has Strong Support (12/15/2011) >Smith: Critics Continue to Spread Lies about SOPA (12/14/2011) This is about as divorced from reality as you could possibly get. If this country is not the definition of a corporate oligarchy I don't know what is.
  - samstave 15y ago
    You know what I love - that issues like SOPA are waking people up to this. I am an admitted tinfoiler of 20+ years. I find the current state of reality surreal!
  - deleted 15y ago
    [deleted]
  - Natsu 15y ago
    > This is about as divorced from reality as you could possibly get. That's politics for you.
Aloisius 15y ago
I love how Xerox supports SOPA. I mean, their entire company was founded around a device that facilitates copyright infringement.
- yuhong 15y ago
  Leading to the Copyright Act of 1976, BTW.
blakeweb 15y ago
Actually, if you read the article and linked letter, you will see that this list does not seem to come from any explicit support of SOPA. Instead, anyone on this list and not on the official judiciary list linked above comes from a letter[1] not stating support for SOPA but rather petitioning Congress to "enact carefully balanced rogue sites legislation this year." From the linked article: "This list is derived from two sources: the official list (pdf) of SOPA supporters from the Judiciary Committee’s website, and a letter (pdf) addressed to Congress from the Global Intellectual Property Center, which is an affiliate of the US Chamber of Commerce." I thought this deserved clarification. [1] http://www.theglobalipcenter.com/sites/default/files/pressreleases/letter-359.pdf http://www.theglobalipcenter.com/sites/default/files/pressre...
- snowwrestler 15y ago
  This is a very important clarification because I think many folks believe that if they can hammer on the specific failings of SOPA, they will somehow "win." Fact of the matter is that IP issues on the Internet are not going to go away, because a lot of big companies believe their businesses are being harmed. So the long-term view is that the SOPA fight is just one piece of a long negotiation.
mekoka 15y ago
I glanced at that list quickly even before I was aware of the boycott. Many of those names are just random non-tech related companies, but I couldn't help but think that GoDaddy sticks out like a sore thumb on it. Almost as if they were tricked into joining.
- ceejayoz 15y ago
  GoDaddy's official Twitter account is currently robo-replying with "We encourage you to visit our blog to view the details of our position on SOPA: http://x.co/c0q4 http://x.co/c0q4, so I doubt they were "tricked".
  - mekoka 15y ago
    Of course not. I know enough of their business practice to know they were willing participants, but one has to wonder what they thought they would gain by enlisting. It looks kinda naive to me.
    - Steko 15y ago
      The ability of easily kill websites would seem to benefit domain registrars in a fairly straightforward way.
    - marshray 15y ago
      GoDaddy seems to be the official registrar of domain name seizure http://www.techspot.com/news/46481-judge-oks-private-domain-seizures-orders-search-engine-filtering.html http://www.techspot.com/news/46481-judge-oks-private-domain-... : ordering the registry to transfer domain names to GoDaddy and ordering GoDaddy to update the DNS records
- nextparadigms 15y ago
  SOPA is also against counterfeit products and drugs. But if they really care about that, they should separate it from copyright infringement. They probably lumped them together just so they can show off with a long list of companies supporting it from different markets.

mrlase 15y ago

Some of these companies are just so random... Why, for instance, does Adidas, L'Oreal, American Apparel, Rite Aid, Pfizer, etc. even have a stance on SOPA? I was rather disconcerted to see that Elsevier was on this list :(

marshray 15y ago
Because they lose money to counterfeit knock offs. There are people who would sell their country's freedom for a handful of cash. I consider them un-American traitors.
- mekoka 15y ago
  Because they lose money to counterfeit knock offs. Your assumption is that if someone doesn't buy knock offs, they'll buy the real thing. Until that can be proven true, I think a better reformulation which more accurately translates the greed of these corporations is Because they feel they're not making more money due to counterfeit knock offs. The companies themselves aren't actually losing anything.
  - marshray 15y ago
    I agree that is more accurate. I thought about writing that but didn't want to slice the language so thin that it distracted from the main point.
  - dextorious 15y ago
    """Your assumption is that if someone doesn't buy knock offs, they'll buy the real thing. Until that can be proven true""" I keep hearing that argument in discussions about counterfeiting/piracy. Does it convince anyone? Yes, lots of people would buy the real thing X if there was no way to buy X's knock offs. It only depends on a) how much they want something X-like and b) the relative price. If (1) something X-like is desirable, and (2) the price of X's knock offs is near the price of X (so that people not affording X at all is not an issue), then people WOULD buy the original if they couldn't get a cheaper knockoff. Does even one person's money lost qualify the issue as "proven"? Because I know that I have downloaded albums and books that I would DEFINITELY have bought if I could not get them for free of the intertubes.
  - codyrobbins 15y ago
    No, I don’t think that’s the reason why fashion brands are against knock-offs. They don’t necessarily expect that everyone who buys a counterfeit will buy the real thing. Instead, a market glutted with counterfeit products dilutes their brand and reflects poorly on the quality of their merchandise because consumers confuse the knock-off with the real thing. And that most certainly does lose them something. A Chanel handbag is a luxury item that, in part, is desirable simply because of its expense and thus relative scarcity—not everyone can have one. Lifestyles brands are built in large part around a carefully crafted image of their consumer, and when every 19 year old Starbucks barista making $21K/year is walking around with a knock-off Chanel handbag it’s difficult to maintain the image they’re going for. Sales drop as the real consumers flee the brand, and then the company has no choice but to market to a lower demographic. Counterfeits undermine the company by commoditizing their goods. Since fashion brands have significantly more limited legal protections for their products than other industries, I don’t see how you could expect them to be against an act that stands to enlarge the remedies available to them to protect their brands. It was shortsighted for the media companies to try to take a sledgehammer to the Internet—since what they sell are inherently digital products for which it was inevitable that distribution would move to the Internet eventually—but apparel is a physical product that isn’t in any danger of having that happen. For that reason apparel companies don’t care about the Internet (just like you probably don’t care very much about apparel), and I can’t say I could really blame them. This isn’t even to mention the fact that fashion design is an art, and having opportunists steal your design, completely mangle it in an attempt to make it cheaper, and then sell it as an original is in all likelihood an incredibly infuriating thing simply from the perspective of artistic purity. Again, I find it hard to blame them for wanting to stop this, given that how well the Internet works is largely irrelevant to practically everyone in the entire industry.
    - michaels0620 15y ago
      There was an article (that I now cannot find) that claimed there was a positive effect of counterfeiting for high end fashion brands because it motivated buyers to more quickly move on to the latest version. Someone who is willing to spend $700 on a hand bag will get a newer version rather than hold onto the one they have when they see anyone and everyone sporting it.
- Iv 15y ago
  In their case, I rather think they are uninterested in the provisions about internet and would support removal of these clauses if this could help SOPA to pass.
- fredBuddemeyer 15y ago
  selling a country's freedom? un-american? its hard to even conceive what on earth this means or how your consideration of what is american - or treason - means anything. and adidas is german.
- pbhjpbhj 15y ago
  >"There are people who would sell their country's freedom for a handful of cash." Do you have to be US American to hold stock in these companies? Do you expect international companies to have a nationality?
skymt 15y ago
SOPA isn't just about copyright: the blacklist is also intended to be used against foreign product counterfeiters, and fashion, drugs & shoes are among the most counterfeited products.
burgerbrain 15y ago
Probably because they want to use SOPA to shut down websites selling "counterfeit" merchandise.
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
darkane 15y ago
The push for these bills really started years ago when pharma companies were desperately trying to prevent the purchase of drugs from Canada and other countries. The entertainment aspect is rather new and actually somewhat secondary.
- waqf 15y ago
  "somewhat secondary" ... that's what the MPAA etc. want Congress to think, so that their Internet-destroying legislation gets in under the radar.
waqf 15y ago
> I was rather disconcerted to see that Elsevier was on this list :( Back when I was in academia, Elsevier had a clear reputation as the most "evil" academic publisher, because of its extortionate journal prices and its active resistance to any method of information dissemination which would reduce its profits (for example, lower-cost online access, or friendlier contracts with its authors). See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elsevier#Criticism_and_controversies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elsevier#Criticism_and_controv.... Apparently nothing's changed.
- mrlase 15y ago
  Wow, I wasn't aware of this. I'm still a student but it seems that about 1 out of every 2 journal articles is by an Elsevier owned journal. I'll have to keep note of that for the future.
shortformblog 15y ago
FYI: That isn't American Apparel on the list — it's an industry group with a similar name that just so happens to count American Apparel as a member — amongst thousands of others. http://shortformblog.tumblr.com/post/14732754002/sopa-american-apparel http://shortformblog.tumblr.com/post/14732754002/sopa-americ... Now's a good time to emphasize that not everything an industry group does is supported by individual members.

samstave 15y ago

Here is the one directly from the SOPA .gov site: http://judiciary.house.gov/issues/Rouge%20Websites/SOPA%20Supporters.pdf http://judiciary.house.gov/issues/Rouge%20Websites/SOPA%20Su...

deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
nickolai 15y ago
>judiciary.house.gov/issues/Rouge%20Websites/SOPA%20Supporters.pdf 'Rouge websites'... Really ? How about figuring out that spelling thing before trying to pass legislation... Or did we miss something and all this SOPA fuss is actually about misspelled counterfeit cosmetics exclusively?
scrod 15y ago
Take a look at the front page of the committee's web site: >Markup Shows Strong Support for SOPA (12/16/2011) >SOPA Has Strong Support (12/15/2011) >Smith: Critics Continue to Spread Lies about SOPA (12/14/2011) This is about as divorced from reality as you could possibly get. If this country is not the definition of a corporate oligarchy I don't know what is.
- samstave 15y ago
  You know what I love - that issues like SOPA are waking people up to this. I am an admitted tinfoiler of 20+ years. I find the current state of reality surreal!
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
- Natsu 15y ago
  > This is about as divorced from reality as you could possibly get. That's politics for you.

Aloisius 15y ago

I love how Xerox supports SOPA. I mean, their entire company was founded around a device that facilitates copyright infringement.

yuhong 15y ago
Leading to the Copyright Act of 1976, BTW.

blakeweb 15y ago

Actually, if you read the article and linked letter, you will see that this list does not seem to come from any explicit support of SOPA. Instead, anyone on this list and not on the official judiciary list linked above comes from a letter[1] not stating support for SOPA but rather petitioning Congress to "enact carefully balanced rogue sites legislation this year." From the linked article: "This list is derived from two sources: the official list (pdf) of SOPA supporters from the Judiciary Committee’s website, and a letter (pdf) addressed to Congress from the Global Intellectual Property Center, which is an affiliate of the US Chamber of Commerce." I thought this deserved clarification. [1] http://www.theglobalipcenter.com/sites/default/files/pressreleases/letter-359.pdf http://www.theglobalipcenter.com/sites/default/files/pressre...

snowwrestler 15y ago
This is a very important clarification because I think many folks believe that if they can hammer on the specific failings of SOPA, they will somehow "win." Fact of the matter is that IP issues on the Internet are not going to go away, because a lot of big companies believe their businesses are being harmed. So the long-term view is that the SOPA fight is just one piece of a long negotiation.

mekoka 15y ago

I glanced at that list quickly even before I was aware of the boycott. Many of those names are just random non-tech related companies, but I couldn't help but think that GoDaddy sticks out like a sore thumb on it. Almost as if they were tricked into joining.

ceejayoz 15y ago
GoDaddy's official Twitter account is currently robo-replying with "We encourage you to visit our blog to view the details of our position on SOPA: http://x.co/c0q4 http://x.co/c0q4, so I doubt they were "tricked".
- mekoka 15y ago
  Of course not. I know enough of their business practice to know they were willing participants, but one has to wonder what they thought they would gain by enlisting. It looks kinda naive to me.
  - Steko 15y ago
    The ability of easily kill websites would seem to benefit domain registrars in a fairly straightforward way.
  - marshray 15y ago
    GoDaddy seems to be the official registrar of domain name seizure http://www.techspot.com/news/46481-judge-oks-private-domain-seizures-orders-search-engine-filtering.html http://www.techspot.com/news/46481-judge-oks-private-domain-... : ordering the registry to transfer domain names to GoDaddy and ordering GoDaddy to update the DNS records
nextparadigms 15y ago
SOPA is also against counterfeit products and drugs. But if they really care about that, they should separate it from copyright infringement. They probably lumped them together just so they can show off with a long list of companies supporting it from different markets.