3 ms·
(copied from my response at http://dorkitude.com/post/14691558851/the-godaddy-victory-is-a-red-herring http://dorkitude.com/post/14691558851/the-godaddy-victory
by dorkitude 15y ago
(copied from my response at http://dorkitude.com/post/14691558851/the-godaddy-victory-is-a-red-herring http://dorkitude.com/post/14691558851/the-godaddy-victory-is...)
The GoDaddy victory is a red herring.
That GoDaddy reversed its SOPA stance (or at least its PR stance) about SOPA in the wake of our boycott is good news, but it's also distracting news. While it does demonstrate that we, the citizens of the righteous internet, can have P&L impact as consumers in the B2B world, the real and massive culprits have been B2C companies.
A very small proportion of a normal B2C company’s revenues come from policy-aware internet citizens. Tactics like the GoDaddy boycott simply will not have an impact (any more than the ongoing boycott of Wal-Mart among the idealistic).
_I don't want us to get distracted from that fact._
_Here are the questions we should be considering._
What can we do to flex our muscles before the many (far more evil) consumer-facing companies out there? How do we legally channel our energy into harming their P&L statements in an unequivocally attributable manner? What about the B2B companies over whose procurement processes we regular citizens have no control?
The companies of greatest concern should be those with contractual and/or infrastructural lock-in:
* telecoms like AT&T and Verizon
* ISPs/media pipes like Comcast and Dish Network
* top-down sales companies like Microsoft and Symantec
* conglomerate-monopolies like Adobe and Autodesk
Unless and until we find a way to hamstring those attacking monsters, the internet will always be in peril -- even if we somehow win this battle like we _barely_ won the Net Neutrality battle a few short years ago.
- jpdoctor 15y ago> While it does demonstrate that we, [...] can have P&L impact as consumers in the B2B world, the real and massive culprits have been B2C companies. Influence on the P&L is great. Influence at the voting booth is one better, and somehow the tech community has to convince congress that the voting booth is in play. (Yes, P&L leads to political donations, which lead to reelection, but politicians are always playing the trade-off game. So somehow they have to get convinced that supporting dumbass legislation will come back to kick them in the nuts.)
- wycats 15y agoPoliticians don't like distractions. If support for some legislation will end up causing distractions, especially during campaign season, they will take notice. The best distractions come from primary challenges directly attributable to their stances on issues, but even having hecklers show up to campaign events can work. The right has been using primary threats for a long time to keep politicians in line. I suspect we could be effective using this strategy as well if we put our energy where our mouth is.
- phillmv 15y agoIt's not a matter of distraction, it's a matter of support and influence and money. If you can convince a politician that a sizeable percentage of influential people who are liable to donate money to a cause are for or a against a particular issue that that they are legislating on, preferably people who are from within his/her riding/ward/district and thus directly impact him/her. Say, like well connected, high earning (mostly white, male) nerds. If you stop to think about the amount of power we are actually capable of wielding, it's actually really shocking that msft/goog/aapl etc seem to have really crappy lobbyists. (As an aside, here for instance is a good Planet Money podcast on lobbying: http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2011/11/01/141913370/the-tuesday-podcast-inside-washingtons-money-machine http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2011/11/01/141913370/the-tues... )
- wycats 15y ago"It's all about money" is a one-dimensional caricature that really doesn't reflect the way most congresspeople actually think. Money matters, of course, but it's not the only thing that matters.
- kirubakaran 15y agoBut it is the most significant bit, correct?
- 15y ago
- badkangaroo 15y agoI've moved from att to sprint, not really that much of a change, but it's not att. I've moved from godaddy to networksolutions, and I'm on sonic.net for my home dsl, and I've not had regular cable service since 2002. I'm also working at a fringe game company and I dont use photoshop or any other adobe anythings and I try to use Modo or blender for 3d whenever possible. Maya and max are hard to get away from... I wish i could say we used ubuntu, but that's just on my personal laptop... :-\
- dorkitude 15y agoIt's a valiant effort, but my point was that end-user boycotts aren't a sound way to affect those companies (unless, perhaps, those end users started boycotting employers that support these companies -- more and more of a possibility, as power shifts into the hands of hackers)
- sc00ter 15y agoI'm not sure on what basis you picked the comanies named on your list, but at least three of the four software companies you mentioned are incorrect, and two of those were never in support of SOPA other than by association with the BSA. http://www.pcworld.com/article/246461/the_case_for_sopa_legislation.html http://www.pcworld.com/article/246461/the_case_for_sopa_legi...
- cma 15y agoIsn't association with BSA, being that they are a copyright-enforcement arm, extremely relevant?
- fpgeek 15y agoIIRC, the BSA backed away from SOPA a while back (after a similar but shorter and less extensive pressure campaign focused on its members). I'd say that makes BSA membership less relevant at this point.
- zby 15y agoWhat could hit them would be a "I will not work for a company supporting SOPA" campaign - but that would be a hard sell I guess.