7 ms·

GoDaddy is uniquely influential because they're an Internet company. Members of Congress aren't surprised to find movie studios supporting a bill like SOPA. B

by pg 15y ago

GoDaddy is uniquely influential because they're an Internet company. Members of Congress aren't surprised to find movie studios supporting a bill like SOPA. But when an Internet company does, it gives the bill a (false) appearance of broader support. Which is presumably why GoDaddy was recruited by whoever recruited them.

Natsu 15y ago
This was a perfect storm where private, online outrage was easily channeled into public action, encouraging others to join in. It didn't hurt that NameCheap and their PR department was out there milking it, either. Hopefully it's a wake-up call to the other SOPA supporters who may suffer the same fate invisibly, when outraged geeks stop recommending Sony gear to friends asking for recommendations or things like that.
- toyg 15y ago
  No self-respecting geek would ever recommend any Sony gear anyway. Their hardware arm is a slave to the content-producing arm, who has been crippling new devices with broken DRM since the 90s.
  - Natsu 15y ago
    True, Sony gear is utter crap, but things like lost recommendations are too invisible to make other people take notice. While a few people will chime in on any thread to mention that they, too, have been boycotting Sony since the rootkit, it's hard to get any sense of who is doing what. Contrast that with GoDaddy, where outsiders can tell how many domains moved, how much of an exodus is average, who made good on their promise to move.
absconditus 15y ago
I think that you are giving people too much credit. Switching domain registrars has virtually no impact for those who register domain names. Not watching certain movies or television shows or having to avoid certain video games is asking too much of most people.
- htsh 15y ago
  You are stating another reason more than refuting his. I'm not disagreeing with your reason but his point is that this is big from Congress' perspective as we can now safely say that there are 0 internet companies in support of this. Whereas before Congress saw a mixed signal they now see unison in one of our country's most important growth industries. And that is big. And I don't know if you've transfered domains before but I didn't have a good time doing it. Though it was not difficult I think we've seen some tremendous overstatements in this thread as to how easy it actually works out in practice. And for me at least it's not that it not difficult to not watch ESPN. People don't live in a world without choices -- usually when they buy Battlefield they are also considering MW3 or the Batman game. There are some die-hard fans but also a lot of us that like football but are perfectly happy watching an episode or two of Breaking Bad instead if that's on. The NFL needs casual fans too, and those are the ones we should think about when we think about boycotts. Of course it will seem hopeless if you think about the guy with his face painted blue but I'm asking you to think of the guy flipping channels at home. You only need to sway opinion a tiny little bit to change things considerably -- this is why boycotts work so damn well. The hardest thing to get over the common cynical attitude that "people won't do it, therefore we should not try." (you should check out some Gandhi -- he explains far better than I ever can why boycotts aren't just effective but arguably the most effective tool that ordinary citizens have, and also almost always much easier to execute than we think they are)
  - absconditus 15y ago
    Nonsense. Go Daddy is a gnat compared to the content companies that support SOPA. I have transferred domains before. It was trivial. You must not know many sports fans. My argument was not that people should not boycott Go Daddy, only that people did it because it was not inconvenient.
    - htsh 15y ago
      I know a bunch of sports fans of all sorts but mostly I know me, and I know that I have a DVR & all kinds of netflix videos to catch up on that compete for my (damn-near-zero) entertainment time with the NFL. Personally I gave up the NFL as a result of this -- so maybe I'm a bad example. And I'm done with ESPN too. Really, I haven't noticed in the week that has gone by so far. And I love sports -- I'll watch NBA and MLB games and my life will be quite alright. I'll even play sports videogames & read about sports & watch sports news on television & I will do it without watching ESPN or the NFL. So I'll give you that the freaks won't switch but I don't think you'll give me that the casual fans will if they associate the NFL or ESPN with these bad things. Out of curiosity, would you be able to give up ESPN or the NFL or even one of those things? I'm not saying give up everything, but can't you see that if everyone who was upset even chose one company to boycott that it would do something?
htsh 15y ago
PG, I know you aren't inviting them to your demo day, but I hope you can commit to not not doing business with the law firms on this list and also not sharing law firms with these old-media dinosaurs like ESPN and the NFL. If ESPN hires a law firm to write this bad law which will likely hurt your business in the future, doesn't it make sense to advise your clients to not hire that same law firm? As someone who has worked with both, it's clear that the Entrenched Big Law model & the Disruptive Startup Model are obviously incompatible and the more we can do to move away from these conflicted monoliths the better we can actually affect real reform. This will require some work and likely even severing an old business relationship or two, but these small changes from someone like you and a peer or 2 can have immeasurable effect. 1 Paul Graham taking business away from 1 Big Law Firm will do more than thousands of us can.
- DanLivesHere 15y ago
  By and large, the law firms shouldn't be on the list. Some lawyers wrote a letter arguing that the Constitutional concerns around SOPA are non-issues; Rep. Lamar Smith and co. used that letter as a basis for including many of the firms on the official list of SOPA supporters. http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20111223/09051617180/law-firms-removing-their-name-sopa-supporters-list-sopa-support-crumbling.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20111223/09051617180/law-fi...
  - htsh 15y ago
    This does not change the fact that ESPN's law firm working with other big law firms wrote large chunks of this bad law just the way their clients wanted it. Or that lawyers at law firms don't just willy-nilly write or sign these letters for free, they do it on behalf of their SOPA-supporting clients while receiving a paycheck from the law firm who their SOPA-supporting-client has hired. Again, that's why I made the point about sharing law firms. All it's saying is "I'm not doing business with these lawyers who I think are being paid by clients to help them censor the internet." And though the law firm isn't saying "our entire law firm supports this law," they are saying "our lawyer looked at this law for our client and she did find constitutional problems with it even though that is not the position of the entire firm." As I explained below I can understand why the latter isn't so troubling to some but I think the incentives these firms face are the same once they are in the business of protecting ESPN's interests. And it will not change the fact that startups not working with ESPNs law firm will 1 - Give business to lawyers who do believe censoring the internet is unconstitutional & 2 - Remove an obvious and blatant conflict of interest. I'm just saying, do we really want our startups to be working with the same network of big law firms that helped Disney extend copyright law duration to infinity 100 years ago? These big law firms obviously have their interests in protecting old streams of business -- I would too.

by pg 15y ago

Natsu 15y ago

This was a perfect storm where private, online outrage was easily channeled into public action, encouraging others to join in. It didn't hurt that NameCheap and their PR department was out there milking it, either. Hopefully it's a wake-up call to the other SOPA supporters who may suffer the same fate invisibly, when outraged geeks stop recommending Sony gear to friends asking for recommendations or things like that.

toyg 15y ago
No self-respecting geek would ever recommend any Sony gear anyway. Their hardware arm is a slave to the content-producing arm, who has been crippling new devices with broken DRM since the 90s.
- Natsu 15y ago
  True, Sony gear is utter crap, but things like lost recommendations are too invisible to make other people take notice. While a few people will chime in on any thread to mention that they, too, have been boycotting Sony since the rootkit, it's hard to get any sense of who is doing what. Contrast that with GoDaddy, where outsiders can tell how many domains moved, how much of an exodus is average, who made good on their promise to move.

absconditus 15y ago

I think that you are giving people too much credit. Switching domain registrars has virtually no impact for those who register domain names. Not watching certain movies or television shows or having to avoid certain video games is asking too much of most people.

htsh 15y ago
You are stating another reason more than refuting his. I'm not disagreeing with your reason but his point is that this is big from Congress' perspective as we can now safely say that there are 0 internet companies in support of this. Whereas before Congress saw a mixed signal they now see unison in one of our country's most important growth industries. And that is big. And I don't know if you've transfered domains before but I didn't have a good time doing it. Though it was not difficult I think we've seen some tremendous overstatements in this thread as to how easy it actually works out in practice. And for me at least it's not that it not difficult to not watch ESPN. People don't live in a world without choices -- usually when they buy Battlefield they are also considering MW3 or the Batman game. There are some die-hard fans but also a lot of us that like football but are perfectly happy watching an episode or two of Breaking Bad instead if that's on. The NFL needs casual fans too, and those are the ones we should think about when we think about boycotts. Of course it will seem hopeless if you think about the guy with his face painted blue but I'm asking you to think of the guy flipping channels at home. You only need to sway opinion a tiny little bit to change things considerably -- this is why boycotts work so damn well. The hardest thing to get over the common cynical attitude that "people won't do it, therefore we should not try." (you should check out some Gandhi -- he explains far better than I ever can why boycotts aren't just effective but arguably the most effective tool that ordinary citizens have, and also almost always much easier to execute than we think they are)
- absconditus 15y ago
  Nonsense. Go Daddy is a gnat compared to the content companies that support SOPA. I have transferred domains before. It was trivial. You must not know many sports fans. My argument was not that people should not boycott Go Daddy, only that people did it because it was not inconvenient.
  - htsh 15y ago
    I know a bunch of sports fans of all sorts but mostly I know me, and I know that I have a DVR & all kinds of netflix videos to catch up on that compete for my (damn-near-zero) entertainment time with the NFL. Personally I gave up the NFL as a result of this -- so maybe I'm a bad example. And I'm done with ESPN too. Really, I haven't noticed in the week that has gone by so far. And I love sports -- I'll watch NBA and MLB games and my life will be quite alright. I'll even play sports videogames & read about sports & watch sports news on television & I will do it without watching ESPN or the NFL. So I'll give you that the freaks won't switch but I don't think you'll give me that the casual fans will if they associate the NFL or ESPN with these bad things. Out of curiosity, would you be able to give up ESPN or the NFL or even one of those things? I'm not saying give up everything, but can't you see that if everyone who was upset even chose one company to boycott that it would do something?

htsh 15y ago

PG, I know you aren't inviting them to your demo day, but I hope you can commit to not not doing business with the law firms on this list and also not sharing law firms with these old-media dinosaurs like ESPN and the NFL. If ESPN hires a law firm to write this bad law which will likely hurt your business in the future, doesn't it make sense to advise your clients to not hire that same law firm? As someone who has worked with both, it's clear that the Entrenched Big Law model & the Disruptive Startup Model are obviously incompatible and the more we can do to move away from these conflicted monoliths the better we can actually affect real reform. This will require some work and likely even severing an old business relationship or two, but these small changes from someone like you and a peer or 2 can have immeasurable effect. 1 Paul Graham taking business away from 1 Big Law Firm will do more than thousands of us can.

DanLivesHere 15y ago
By and large, the law firms shouldn't be on the list. Some lawyers wrote a letter arguing that the Constitutional concerns around SOPA are non-issues; Rep. Lamar Smith and co. used that letter as a basis for including many of the firms on the official list of SOPA supporters. http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20111223/09051617180/law-firms-removing-their-name-sopa-supporters-list-sopa-support-crumbling.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20111223/09051617180/law-fi...
- htsh 15y ago
  This does not change the fact that ESPN's law firm working with other big law firms wrote large chunks of this bad law just the way their clients wanted it. Or that lawyers at law firms don't just willy-nilly write or sign these letters for free, they do it on behalf of their SOPA-supporting clients while receiving a paycheck from the law firm who their SOPA-supporting-client has hired. Again, that's why I made the point about sharing law firms. All it's saying is "I'm not doing business with these lawyers who I think are being paid by clients to help them censor the internet." And though the law firm isn't saying "our entire law firm supports this law," they are saying "our lawyer looked at this law for our client and she did find constitutional problems with it even though that is not the position of the entire firm." As I explained below I can understand why the latter isn't so troubling to some but I think the incentives these firms face are the same once they are in the business of protecting ESPN's interests. And it will not change the fact that startups not working with ESPNs law firm will 1 - Give business to lawyers who do believe censoring the internet is unconstitutional & 2 - Remove an obvious and blatant conflict of interest. I'm just saying, do we really want our startups to be working with the same network of big law firms that helped Disney extend copyright law duration to infinity 100 years ago? These big law firms obviously have their interests in protecting old streams of business -- I would too.